The Secret Fate of Mary Watson (7 page)

He’s calm. ‘A couple of small errands, that is all. How do you say … chickenfeed.’

The hard tinkle of breaking glass, followed by a female caterwaul comes through from the kitchen.

‘What now!’ His belly is through the door well before the rest of him.

I follow close behind, but not before I’ve passed his open drawer, retrieved a five-pound note and slipped it down the side of my boot. Call it annoyance money for putting up with him.

The door snicks shut as I leave.

The edge of the bed at midnight seems a fitting perch. The mattress squeaks as I turn sideways to smooth the note flat on the covers. The lamplight’s steady. It’s my nerve that’s faltering.

I rest the grille on top of the page. The message resolves, far too easily it seems to me.

No island signal man Chinaman gone bush searching still

No island signal man? It
must
be Lizard Island they’re referring to. There is no other strategic position along the coast with such an advantageous bird’s-eye view of the passage north and south. That great lumbering reptile of rock seventy miles north of here, the water surrounding it fairly fizzing with every ambitious smuggler’s intentions. That’s why Percy has placed himself there, working as a sea-slug fisherman. I’m positive of it now.

I fill my cheeks with air, then exhale noisily. It’s the signal hill that’s the magnet, of course. For Charley Boule, for Percy, and, it seems, for Captain Roberts. But who is the Chinaman? Roberts and Percy must want him as a signaller for their upcoming operation. But why him particularly? And why would he have gone bush? So as not to be found?

Drunken cursing just outside my window startles me back to the job at hand. I pull the empty chamber pot from under the bed. When the paper’s burned, I’ll moisten the ashes with water from the bedside jug. In the morning, I’ll tip it into the lavatory trench behind the boarding house. No danger of forgetting the message. I’m too riddled with curiosity for that.

Dry-mouthed, I light the note at the lamp and hold it over the chamber pot as it burns. The smoke seems far too pungent for such a small piece of paper.

It’s more the size of someone burning a bridge behind them.

Ten o’clock on a coruscating Saturday morning two weeks later. I look up and down the shimmering dock, basket in hand, searching for Dirty White Neckerchief. But he’s not leaning his angular frame casually against a pylon, smoking. Nor standing on the crooked wooden slats at the end of the pier staring out to
sea, the hot breeze fiddling his brown hair. The harbour smells of oil, the salty-leather of seaweed cooking in the sun. The fish stalls for European customers are crowded, the catch of the day lined up like silvery exclamation marks. The tables for Chinese buyers are a witch’s larder of fins, roe, sea grapes, and slimy fish eyes piled into the single socket of a blue-rimmed dish. Sun throws a slab of steel at the water, where the raw material is reorganised and thrown back as rippled blades, making my eyes water. Beyond the pier to my left, two men drag a dirty crab-pot along the muddy edge of the river. Behind me, on Charlotte Street, Harry Browning, proprietor of Victoria Stores, throws a saddle over his horse and reaches under its belly to secure the girth.

I shoo away a heat-drugged fly. It’s a quarter past the hour. Where is he?

The work has been easy so far. I’ve arrived at ten precisely each Saturday with the word-for-word recital of the note I’ve burned ready inside my head. Two more notes have been passed to me since the first, each one, in substance, emphasising with increasing urgency the need to find the elusive runaway Chinaman. It seems he’s destined for the position of signaller on Lizard Island. I must also assume that he doesn’t want the job.

Up until today, the script has gone exactly as Percy said it would. After our banter about the relative merits of the fish on offer, Dirty White Neckerchief and I wander casually around the dock as if going about separate business. Briefly, we’re close enough for me to play my unobtrusive part in our game of Chinese Whispers.

But what am I supposed to do now?

At eleven o’clock, I give up. Unease stirs my stomach for the rest of the day. If he’s finished up like Cobweb and Percy’s last
note decoder, I don’t want to know. Captain Roberts’s mysterious business tends to turn poisonous for his minions. There is no other conclusion to draw.

Bad things happen when people know too much.

6TH DECEMBER 1879

Saturday night, nine thirty. French Charley’s, like a sickening carousel, throbs with laughter and movement. I can’t block it out, but neither can I focus on my playing. The morning’s drama is too fresh. Dirty White Neckerchief’s failure to make our rendezvous is still thumping the piano keys in my head. Riley Robinson, the town’s oldest ex-prospector, slides into the chair next to me, cradling a beer. Seventy and toughened to ox-leather, he’s the only man who comes to French Charley’s just for the music — and only then, Charley says, because he’s half-deaf and doddery. But Riley is neither deaf nor senile. He’s a kindred spirit … in an uncomfortable way. He sees and hears far more than most.

Usually, he minds his own business. But he clicks his tongue when I mention my walks with Bob Watson. It’s true these outings are endurance events. I feel sorry for Bob’s graceless
attempts at courting. And slightly fond of him, in the abstract way one is fond of a lame duck trying to swim towards a piece of bread whilst going around in circles. I’ve amused myself during his broguish babble by making a study of his habits. The clink of his medicinal balls, which have a language all their own. The way he holds his hat in front of his trousers, then rides the boundary of its brim with his fingers. How his scar twitches when he doesn’t want to answer a question I’ve posed. The whole rusty machine of his social skills cranked up on each occasion by his nerves. He must, I tell Riley, be very lonely to put himself repeatedly through such an ordeal. That, or he is quite enamoured of me.

Riley runs a withered hand over his jaw. Puts the glass to his mouth. One beer lasts him all night. He swallows, and his wrinkled Adam’s apple drops down the shaft of his throat like an underground miner with his protective hat on sideways. Comes back up again. He licks the foam off his upper lip.

‘Dirty business, slugs,’ he says. ‘Men go slugging when there’s nothing else left for them.’

My nostrils twitch. Someone in the darkened corner is smoking an opium pipe.

‘Gold prospecting’s hardly the employment of gentlemen,’ I say. ‘Besides, Bob and his partner own the station on the island. A business like that could expand in all sorts of ways: trochus, pearl shelling. One found pearl is worth a fortune.’

I don’t know why I’m defending Bob’s profession. It’s not him I’m interested in, after all, but Percy and the island. At the moment Bob’s just the closest I can get to either of them.

‘Grand plans of expansion, eh? Does Watson know you’ve already mapped out his future?’

I let this pass. ‘What do you know about him? Is he a murderer, a rapist, a pillager? In these parts that would add up to a run-of-the-mill chap.’

My tone is light, but Riley answers seriously.

‘There was some talk of a woman a year back. Disappeared under strange circumstances. His woman, they say. Though he wouldn’t want to claim her, I’m sure.’

I run a sweaty finger under the high collar of my blouse. There’ll be a reddish ring left on my skin when I get undressed tonight, as though someone began to garrotte me and then lost interest.

‘A wife? And what do you mean he wouldn’t want to claim her?’

‘Not exactly a wife. It was before he got that partner of his — Fuller. Before they took over the station from Bowman.’

He’s avoiding my eyes. I wish the drugged air would do better work of loosening his tongue. Cause him to lay his reticence down on a soft divan and relax into mind-expanding gossip.

‘Who’s Bowman?’ I ask, hoping to bring him back to the topic by roundabout means.

He takes another swallow of his beer. ‘Bowman built the station, the curing shed and the house on the island. The woman went missing from the goldfields, though. Watson did some commercial travelling for a while — pencils, bamboo racks and what not. Ask Inspector Fitzgerald. Me, I keep my own counsel.’

‘You must think Bob was involved in her disappearance or you wouldn’t have mentioned it.’

He shrugs. ‘Lots of things happen on the goldfields. And it’s not my place to comment. It’s something to do with the Lizard, though, I’ll wager.’

‘Lizard Island. What, is it cursed?’ I laugh.

He pulls back a little more into his shell. ‘All I know is bad things happen there. And the wild blacks are drawn to it, like a fingernail to a scab.’

‘You said Bob’s woman went missing from the goldfields. Is it a kind of moving curse, then?’

He ignores my dismissive tone. ‘The past casts lengthy shadows.’ He opens the lid of a metal spittoon, then clicks it shut again without using it. ‘You more than anyone should know that.’ His gaze is suddenly overbright and I turn away from it. ‘Fancy the idea of hitching up with Watson, do you?’ he asks.

‘Don’t be ridiculous, I hardly know the man!’

He rubs a grimy thumb over his glass. The condensation smears. ‘He doesn’t usually come to Cooktown so often. Reckon he
must
be sweet on you. If you don’t feel the same way, you should let him know. Soon.’

‘Yes, Riley.’ I give him a sideways, dutiful-daughter glance.

One of the girls in a darkened corner shrieks like an exotic bird. The sound cuts through the chattering jungle of the dim room. I finish playing the last few notes of Chopin, then stop for my break. I stretch my fingers and pull the cover down. I love that moment when it slips so neatly into place. Like soothing a fractious animal; the bared set of key-teeth covered up by a polished brown lip. The background noise in the room is suddenly an octave louder.

‘How did you meet Watson in the first place?’ Riley asks.

‘Charley introduced us.’ I tilt my head over my shoulder to where
le raconteur
is in a deep and heavily gesticulated conversation with some harried-looking man who probably owes him money. Charley untangles himself long enough to frown at me, then look forcefully at the piano. I point to the clock on the wall in return.

Riley brings my attention back. ‘What’s that scheming so-and-so up to this time?’

‘Who knows?’

He peers at me intently, the skin around his mouth tightening. ‘You know, Mary, there are some things beyond even your cleverness.’

‘Charley’s not beyond me,’ I say. ‘I may not be able to glean the particulars of any given contrivance, but I know the way his mind works.’ It helps to have had the example of a scheming father all my life. ‘He’s just a petty shyster,’ I add, scratching the top of one foot with the other through my boot. ‘Blasted mosquitos.’

‘I’m not talking about Boule. Time will take care of him. He can’t dodge the guillotine forever.’

His voice and eyes have boiled down to their essence. ‘I have some money. Why don’t you take it? Go home to your family.’

‘Thank you, Riley, but home is backwards,’ I tell him.

‘What’s wrong with that? Death’s in the future.’

‘Don’t say that to a Cornish girl!’

‘You still have time to back out,’ he says.

‘From what? Another walk?’

He sniffs audibly. ‘I’m not as old or as foolish as you think. I watch and I listen. I’m like you in that way.’

I give him a smile and head for the door, through the breathless heat of too many bodies. On the verandah, I take a deep lungful of what passes for cool night air in the tropics. Riley’s a cagey old coot, but far too morbid. I pull the threads of his words from the velvet dark around me. Death? Not for me. Not now; not soon. And when it happens, it won’t be Bob Watson or his island that will get the credit. Look at Cooktown. If ever a bone’s had a target to point at! And I’ve managed to survive here.

Something’s changed in the bar when I come back from my break. No immediate sight or sound alerts me, rather it’s my sixth sense twanging. I look up and realise what my intuition already knows. He’s sitting alone in the corner, a fresh beer untouched on the table, his arms folded across his chest. Dressed in black.

Captain Roberts holds my eye. Fondles the pet of his beard.

I try to swallow, walk slowly to the piano. It’s no good. I still feel his attention: through the material of my dress, between my shoulderblades, digging deeper, through skin and muscle, reaching the spine, making it vibrate like some ghastly xylophone. My fingers are full of stuffing. I lift the lid and sit, start playing automatically. I hear the music from a long way off. What does he want? What have I done?

After a few moments I realise I can’t go on until I know. I take a deep breath, wipe my palms on my skirt, close the lid, turn,
and meet his stare. His head kinks almost imperceptibly towards the door. He stands and stalks into the night. It’s clear that I’m ordered to follow. Two men I’ve never seen before peel off the far wall and follow him out. Bodyguards?

I quickly scan the room. Charley’s nowhere to be seen. Hiding in his office, probably, his usual obnoxious bravado headed down the nearest rabbit burrow. Heccy Landers is behind the bar, polishing a glass with a rag. He frowns as I walk past. I plaster on a smile so brittle it’s a wonder my face doesn’t crack. The worry deepens on his face.

‘Ma-Ma-Mary?’

I put a hand up to still his question. Place one foot in front of the other until I’m through the door.

Outside, the air is warm and fragrant, the texture of talc. Voices bubble out from inside Charley’s, breaking into faint fragments the further I move away from the safety of illumination, the security of a crowd.

Roberts steps into the alley adjacent to the salon. His two human guard dogs follow obediently, scanning the street as they move. They’re watching me, too. I hurry to catch up, my heart a few gallops in front of me. The narrow corridor leads to the back of the Federal Hotel, where a door has been left open. A faint mulled-pear light shines from inside. Roberts’s thugs take up position either side of the door, but not before peering over my head and down the alley. Roberts is walking up the stairs, not bothering to check if I’m following. It’s an effort to lift my legs. At the top, he takes a lantern from its peg on the wall and steps into a small, dimly lit room. I follow him in.

Roberts positions the lantern on a pale wooden writing table near four tatty smoking chairs. Dead cockroaches lie on their
backs on the hearth of a disused fireplace. The air smells of dust, neglect and the wild, wet-paper stink of mouse droppings. A piece of flypaper dangles from one corner of the ceiling with a dozen desiccated victims stuck to it.

He chooses a chair facing the door; the dry leather breathes out noisily as he sinks into it. He lifts his big feet onto an upended crate. My eye fixes on his left boot. It will need to be resoled soon; there’s a worn patch the size of a shilling at the ball. I remain standing, but he doesn’t speak, doesn’t gesture for me to sit.

‘I wish you’d just get it over with,’ I say finally.

He doesn’t respond. Just steeples his forefingers, taps his lips. I glance back towards the door. He doesn’t seem to mind if it stays open. I take that as a hopeful sign. But if he doesn’t blame me for the morning’s disconnect, then I don’t know what purpose his silent stare would serve. He might be waiting for me to explain.

I meet his eye. ‘Permission to speak freely?’

One dark brow rises minutely as he thinks about this. ‘Permission granted.’ There’s a flicker of amusement deep in those black eyes. He’s mocking me. ‘Have a seat, Mary Oxnam.’

I sit. Carefully. In the chair furthest from him, back to the door. My mouth opens and all the nervous energy tumbles out. ‘The man who is supposed to receive my messages — Dirty White Neckerchief. He wasn’t at the dock this morning.’

‘You mean Collins.’ It isn’t a question.

‘Nobody told me his name.’

‘Do you always do that?’

‘Do what?’

‘Caricature people with nicknames?’

‘Sometimes. At the poker game back in Brisbane, I did it to all of you. Charley Boule was Dandy. The older man who drank too
much was Sideburns … and so on. The man who passed messages to Wilson was Cobweb because of a piece of web stuck to his head. I guess shoddy grooming turned out to be the least of his worries, didn’t it?’

I didn’t mean to add that last sentence. Not quite. I lean back in my seat. The stiff old leather squeaks.

‘What name did you have for me?’ he asks.

‘Blackbeard.’

‘Not original. But apt, I suppose.’

‘Are you a pirate, Captain Roberts?’

‘On occasion, when it’s necessary.’ This said without pause, and casually, as though I asked him if he was a member of the polo club. He threads those large fingers together on his lap. ‘I know Collins wasn’t there this morning. He’s had an accident. He won’t be your contact any more.’

‘What sort of accident?’ I can’t not ask.

‘A low branch knocked him off his horse, I believe. Act of God.’ He pauses, watching me. Before I can think how to respond, he asks, ‘What was the message you had for him?’

‘
China man not found replace
. I think a question mark may have been intended after the last word. The grille didn’t align perfectly.’

I’m not sure whether to believe him about Collins, but I don’t have time to think about it now. If ever there was an occasion to keep my wits about me …

‘I see.’ He stares into the fireplace.

Dare I say anything? As usual, my mouth decides before my brain has thought it over.

‘I don’t mean to interfere, but surely this reluctant Chinaman is not the only signaller you could get for Liz … I mean, the island?’

Too late to pull back the word. Nowhere in the notes was Lizard Island specifically mentioned. And the Chinaman’s role was only hinted at obliquely.

‘There are many islands around here. What makes you suspect it is the Lizard?’

The voice is silky, non-threatening, but something about the stillness of his head is more alarming than if he’d yelled the words in my face. He’s testing me. If I say the wrong thing now …

‘Charley Boule introduced me to Bob Watson. Charley thinks that if Bob and I get married and I go to live on Lizard Island, I might signal boats for him. His own smuggling operations no doubt require some such communication. I made it plain I’m not interested, of course,’ I add hastily. ‘But Bob and Charley put Lizard Island and its signalling hill in my head. And, of course, Percy works on the Lizard with Bob. So when an island and a signaller appeared in your notes, I put two and two together …’

I’m trying to make it sound as though anyone would draw the same conclusion with the information at hand. But his eyes have hardened.

‘It never occurred to you, I suppose, that it’s not part of your job to consult your abacus?’

Roberts is attempting to stare me down. And succeeding.

‘Back in Brisbane, I thought you’d make a good poker player,’ he says. ‘But you’re too impetuous. You haven’t quite got your timing right. Perhaps it’s your age.’

I don’t answer, just attempt to look chastened. I can’t work out if I’m off the hook or on it.

‘I’m not surprised Boule’s approached you,’ he continues. ‘He’s incapable of relinquishing short-term profit for long-term gain.’

Having just had my fingers burned, I don’t dare fire him up
with another question, but I find his comment puzzling. What long-term gain might Charley be missing?

Roberts pauses again, as if weighing the risk of explaining himself. Or of letting me wander around Cooktown with too much impetuosity at the tip of my tongue. His next words do nothing to clarify my position.

‘As for the Chinaman, he’s not hiding from us. There’s a lynch mob of his own kind after him. He robbed and killed a Chow shopkeeper. He knows what will happen if they catch him. He’ll be pinned by his ears to a tree for a few days, until they’ve agreed on a suitable punishment.’

‘That’s barbaric.’

Something snags in the back of my mind. A wanted poster I’ve seen plastered in a few shop windows. I didn’t take much notice of the Chinaman’s face, as it was in profile, but his raised hands left an impression. Veined and knotted, ugly fingers with long nails like chicken’s feet. So that’s why he had been so difficult to locate.

‘It’s nothing compared to what’s meted out to thieves and murderers in China,’ Roberts says. ‘They behead them in the town square. Then the crowds dip their money in the blood as it gushes out of the neck. It’s supposed to be lucky.’

‘Depends on whether it’s
your
head that’s been disconnected, I’d think.’

My nerve is returning; I wouldn’t have thought two minutes ago that I’d do anything but stare dumbly at him. But curiosity hasn’t quite killed this cat … so far, at least. I risk another one of my nine lives.

‘Why would you want a man who’s on the run to work for you on the Lizard?’

‘What better reason for him to co-operate? He’s delivered from vengeful compatriots and put in a safe haven in the middle of the ocean. It’s not just that he can’t escape. He can’t even want to.’

‘I see.’ His last remark reminds me of my own situation. ‘What am I to do now, Captain? Who do I pass the messages on to?’

He grabs his beard under his chin and tugs on it like a bell rope. ‘That part of your job has come to an end. You can go back to the same surveillance work that occupied you when you first came to Cooktown.’

‘So I’m being demoted?’

He scratches his cheek above the beard. ‘Did you think you would rise through the ranks in measured increments and then end up with a nice fat pension? This is not the Civil Service.’

I feel my shoulders sink. He’s right, of course. There’s nothing civil about this business. And not many of his employees, I would imagine, need to worry about saving for their old age.

‘I was hoping my loyalty might count for something,’ I say.

‘It does. There’s a direct correlation between your loyalty and the state of your health.’

The sense of foreboding that started this morning with the absence of Dirty White Neckerchief, and reached a breaking point when Roberts appeared in French Charley’s, is back. I know enough to see a lessening of my duties as a very bad sign indeed. Roberts and Percy will soon have their base on Lizard Island. The small-time intelligence I can supply from Cooktown will be of only peripheral interest to them. At best, I’ll be ignored, left to languish, playing piano in a brothel. At worst, I’ll outlive my usefulness altogether.

What are my options? Would they let me go now? Could I walk away? Even so, I’d only have enough money to get back to
Brisbane, where I might live frugally for six months. Then, back to where I started. No prospects. No future.

I take a shuddery breath. I have to talk myself back into the game. I’ve risked so much, come so far. I’m still as good a player as any of them. My motto in Brisbane when talking to Percy comes back to me:
may as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb
. I hold my sweaty hands together in front of me.

‘Captain Roberts, what if I could position myself on Lizard Island? I could be your signaller.’

He’s relaxed, not taking me seriously. ‘And how exactly would you propose to do that? Get out the lampblack? Disguise yourself as one of the Kanaka crew on Watson’s lugger? At least the Chinaman, if he ever materialises, will pass as a servant.’

‘I told you that Charley Boule introduced me to Bob Watson. Bob’s fond of me. More than fond. If I married him, we would live on Lizard Island. But not to signal for Charley; to signal for you. What could attract less suspicion than a dutiful wife, helpmeet to her husband in his sea-slug-fishing business?’

‘You would go so far for mere money?’

‘I’m not un-fond of Bob,’ I say, a trifle defensively. ‘And there’s nothing mere about money to me. It means a new life. A new start. If I continue to prove my loyalty, that is. I assume it would be a well-paid position?’

‘Oh, indeed. It’s risky work. For which I naturally pay a generous stipend.’

‘All the more reason, I would think, not to entrust such an important task to a nervous Chinaman who’s stupid enough to murder a countryman in a much-too-public way.’

Roberts puts one finger to his temple. His black stare dares me to falter.

‘What would you do when your job on the Lizard was finished?’ he asks. ‘Would you stay with Watson?’

‘Would that matter to you?’

‘Probably not. But if you mean to go and start this new life of yours, it would be an extra complication. You’d have an irate husband trying to track you down.’

I project as calm a demeanour as I can manage. ‘You’ll allow I don’t let much get past me? Bob Watson has a chequered history with women. He would just chalk up the loss of another to experience, I think. One more disappointment to feel bitter about. How many sensible marriages are built on romance, anyway?’

I can feel the pulse beating at my temples. It’s as though someone far older and more cynical is putting the words in my mouth. How could I possibly know how Bob would react if I left our hypothetical marriage? I hardly know the man. And what of me? Could I really accomplish such a charade? Could I live with Bob? Go to bed with him? That strange, two-sided face sweaty and intense above me … Am I really setting the bar too high? Or am I perversely setting it too low? Maybe I’ve convinced myself that real contentment with a man is not the province of a homely girl like me, and I must orchestrate the future on my own terms. There’s enough truth in this to make me feel squeamish.

I realise that Roberts has been talking and, for the first time since I met him, I haven’t been hanging on every word. I must sustain a firm argument with this man, whether or not I’m convinced, myself. He’ll see even the smallest hesitation, and discount me because of it.

‘Marriage? I’ve never been locked up in that particular institution, so I’m no expert,’ he says. ‘But it seems to me it’s a fairly irrevocable step for a young girl like you.’