A Treacherous Country

by K. M. Kruimink

  ‘Not to sell your harpoons, as I have been told?’

  ‘Indeed no, madam. I am in the colony on behalf of a lady who has sent me to find somebody who was brought here thirty years ago.’

  ‘Brought here?’

  ‘As a convict. But her Relative is very respectable.’

  Mrs Heron received this information with a thoughtful silence, but when she next spoke, it was of another matter. She did strike me as an intuitive woman, and perhaps somehow she had discerned the connexion, for she said: ‘I heard you were clasping the image of a young lady when you were pulled from the sea. May I see it? And know who she is?’

  I had Susannah’s miniature in my pocket, for I had resolved never to be parted from it, and I gladly brought it out to show her. It had not suffered at all for its immersion; in fact, it seemed a little brighter than before. Mrs Heron passed the string of the Balloon to Tam, just as I had seen her do some hours previously, when I was brought back to shore in the whaleboat. She took the portrait in both her hands, letting it nestle in her palms like a precious thing indeed.

  ‘She is a very pretty girl,’ said Mrs Heron.

  Tam asked to be shown the image, and, upon looking, concurred that she was indeed pretty.

  ‘Her name is Susannah Prendergast,’ I said, ‘and she is the girl I shall marry.’

  ‘Is it a good likeness?’

  ‘The likeness is fairly good, although the Artist made her eyes grey, when they are in fact green—I had thought at first that perhaps he did not have any green paint, but as you can see, her hair is yellow, and her dress is blue, and it would be a poor Artist indeed who did not know one might combine those two colours in order to make green.’

  ‘It is perhaps more likely you have misremembered the colour of your young lady’s eyes,’ said Mrs Heron. ‘You would not be the first young man to do so.’

  I was appalled at this suggestion. Yet, as I gazed upon the little painting of Susannah in the fey and flickering light, and then remembered the girl herself, I had to admit that—yes, perhaps her eyes were truly grey.

  ‘And she is waiting for you to complete your task?’

  Now I found I stared at Mrs Heron, for she asked me something that I had never actually put into words. ‘I hope so,’ I said at last, after an uncomfortably long moment. ‘After she refused my suit, her great-grandmother, Mrs Prendergast—who is her guardian—summoned me and charged me with my mission, which is as I have told you, to seek this person—whose name is Maryanne Maginn—and bring her Home.’

  ‘Ah! You say Susannah did not agree to marry you.’

  True! Yet I believed that it was my own poor timing that had caused her to decline my advance. The awkward aftermath of my mother’s withdrawal from the table, and the delicate concession that the party was concluded untimely early, and the stolen moment behind the curtain—I had acted wrongly. ‘She did indeed not agree, but only because I had timed my proposal very poorly.’

  ‘And Susannah will agree to marry you, if you are successful?’

  ‘That is my most earnest hope.’

  ‘So the last word you had on the matter from the young lady was to refuse you?’

  ‘Yes—’

  ‘Forgive my wife,’ said Mr Heron, sweeping towards us like a man half sea, half flesh. ‘She has been long without anything new to read.’

  ‘Do not dismiss me so,’ said the lady. ‘It is a serious matter—the matter of marriage—and I do not think Mr Fox begrudges a kind and maternal word from an older person than he. Young men, in general, do not know the gravity of wedlock—of what they ask. You are asking the young lady to surrender her dignity to you,’ she said to me, ‘and her security, and to commit her body to pain and peril, and if she has told you that she will not, I do not know that it is quite correct of you to try to convince her she is wrong. You will forgive, I pray, such frank words, for they are kindly meant.’

  I thought of Susannah as she had been that Christmas Day, soft in look but firm in tone. And I remembered her pale gown, and skin, and shuddered to think it striped in blood, and that rosebud mouth agape, and the eyes—green, or grey, I did not know—wide. Why should I think of blood! What images Mrs Heron conjured!

  ‘I have borne and lost twelve children, Mr Fox. So you see I do speak with some authority upon the matter of a wife’s suffering.’

  I looked at her and thought: My father would lock you in the attic for that.

  A profoundly intimate question sprang to my lips, for it was a matter I had pondered in the past, when my friend Georges Aubert’s two sisters both died in the same accident and—I blame my inebriation—I asked it. ‘How does grief function, Mrs Heron, in the heart, I mean, when one grieves more than a single loss? Does one feel each loss as keenly—are two deaths twice as painful as one—or does one have a Limit, beyond which one cannot grieve anew?’

  Mr Heron grew a little more cadaverous, and Mrs Heron a little more translucent. ‘For me, it was grief multiplied by twelve,’ she said.

  ‘Grief upon grief,’ said Mr Heron.

  I had the sudden and quite desperate need to withdraw, and go and be alone somewhere, and get yet drunker, and perhaps, finally, eat. I stepped away too hastily, and made my apologies, and forgot to thank the Herons for the whisky, or to delicately enquire if the invitation had been purely social, or if there was some further matter they wished to discuss with me—in short, I fled.

  ‘I look forward to seeing you with us in the boat to-morrow,’ said Mrs Heron, a dozen times bereaved, to my receding back.

  I had looked at the Balloon too long, for twin beacons were burnt into my eyes, and drifted ahead of me as I went.

  IT WAS NEVER THUS

  I was in the library in conference with Dr Hughes, my brothers and Father when came the summons from Mrs Prendergast.

  Dr Hughes was a squat man of similar dimensions all the way around, his height and width being about equal. All the hair had been frightened from his head and into his ears, which rendered him half deaf, for which reason he abused an ear trumpet.

  Father stood warming his backside before the hearth. He was a remarkably grey man, and had been so all my life—and earlier, as I judged it from portraiture—neither growing older nor changing in temperament in any way. Some men grow fat, and some become wasted, and some more conservative, and some more liberal with age—not so my father. I believe he was born Finished. He swept with evident ease and comfort through life, allowing all its vicissitudes to bounce from him along the way. He had a profusion of thick grey hair very neatly combed and oiled with Macassar, and a similar thickness sprouting from above his large eyes. He had a vertical line for a nose, and a horizontal line for a mouth, and a high forehead, and everything, every aspect of this man’s face and person, was the same grey as his hair. That evening, before the library hearth, his hands were clasped behind him to lift his tails, that the heat might more directly access his seat. Although he was addressing us, he was directing his gaze out of the window to the clouds pregnant with the snow that had not yet fallen. Everything about him—the easy attitude, the mild arrangement of his features and the loosened tie—spoke to a distinct air of contentment.

  It was Boxing Day.

  ‘Given that we are all in perfect agreement on the appropriateness of this measure, for Lady Fox’s own sake, to save her further embarrassment,’ he said, ‘all that is left to us is to consider what further comforts—not Excitements or Diversions—for example, cards would be too much—but rather how we might keep her softly enough that she does not grow agitated, but not so softly that she grows Fat. I shall outfit her new quarters precisely as we may decide is best for her, in consultation with Dr Hughes. I shall spare no expense, of course—however, we must look not to Indulgence and Fashion as our guide, but rather to howsoever we might best encourage a recovery based upon Scientific principles.’ He spoke with his usual precision, low and certain. ‘None shall fault me,’ he added.

  Freddie, my eldest brother, was in some ag
itation himself. His brow was quite furrowed, and his face was as grey as Father’s. There had always been a great Indian carpet upon the library floor, woven in silk and wool of reds and yellows, which had faded and coalesced over the years to a respectable blood colour. Freddie’s foot had found the corner nearest the hearth, and he was nervously turning it over with his toe, and back, and over, and back. It was testament to the depth of his feeling that he ventured to speak out against Father at all, for this was a domestic trespass we had learnt well, even as little children, that we must not commit. ‘I do not know that we are in complete agreement, Father,’ he said, with a tentativeness quite moving to see in one usually so assured. ‘Would not it be kinder if she were to take an extended Holiday? I shall go with her—to Switzerland, perhaps, for the air—’

  ‘We are all in perfect agreement,’ said Father again, musingly, slowly, still looking at the clouds. An uncertain silence ensued, broken only by the rustling of the carpet under Freddie’s foot as he persisted in pushing it back and forth.

  ‘Stop that,’ said Father, and Freddie at once became still. ‘I have often thought we ought to replace that carpet,’ Father went on. ‘It is from my grandfather’s time, and rather past its best.’

  ‘Perhaps Mamma might enjoy use of it, and find comfort in its old Familiarity, in the attic,’ said my middle brother, John. John and I were like Father in form, tall and thin, although John had a sportiness about him that I lacked. He would turn brown as a berry in the summer and go striding about the place. It was he who had the appearance and style of the first son, and he was indeed often taken as such by those making our acquaintance for the first time. There was a masterfulness in everything John did, from the imperious way he directed the servants, to the casual way he treated the ancient fixtures and furnishings of the house. Freddie, who would take the title upon Father’s death, was much more like Mamma. He was a smaller person, quick-witted, but prone to melancholy.

  I felt a sickness that had its origins in some abstract part of me, like the Soul, or similar. Freddie and I dared a discreet exchange of troubled glances between us.

  I asked, ‘How long, Doctor, do you think she might need to be so—’ I could not go on, for the word that came to my mind was imprisoned, and I knew Father would not welcome that.

  ‘Retired,’ said John.

  ‘Why, for as long as is necessary,’ said the Doctor. ‘Until such time that she is no longer in any danger.’

  Danger?

  Dr Hughes rippled obsequiously and began to discourse upon the general matter of Mamma. He had seen Bedlam, he said, and it was no place for a lady. ‘Would you have her cast amongst the Drunk and Derelict? No!—Sir Alfred has said it well—it is for dear Lady Fox’s own sake. Would you not rather to keep her close, where you might kindly watch her, and where I might attend her as often as is required?’ He expounded upon this matter, offering some elaboration of his professional diagnosis of Mamma’s distracted wits, and the perils of excessive Freedom, until my father, with a stately nod, caused him to dwindle to an awkward close.

  ‘But, surely, our choices are not limited to, one, Bedlam, and two, the attic?’ ventured Freddie.

  Nobody responded to this remark.

  Into the silence, I asked, ‘How often might we visit her?’

  ‘Perhaps once daily?’ said the Doctor, looking at Father. Father inclined his head.

  ‘We might try diurnal visits, and, between us, observe how she responds to so frequent attention. It may be it is too much.’

  John was nodding sombrely. ‘This is a sore blow for the family,’ he said.

  ‘Indeed. It is a great pity her scene was so thoroughly witnessed,’ said Father. ‘And we shall see what wide-ranging fruit your mother’s trouble will engender. It shall not harm your prospects, Alfred, but I should not be amazed if you younger two find certain families once open to matrimonial arrangement, for example, are no longer quite such friends to us.’

  ‘We had not so many guests yesterday,’ said John.

  ‘And yet people talk,’ Father said, with a supercilious look that communicated what he thought of People.

  ‘Shall we take meals with her?’ asked Freddie.

  ‘What—in the attic?’ said John.

  ‘Quietness is the key, here,’ said the Doctor. ‘Quietness—and Simplicity.’

  ‘Indeed,’ said Father. ‘Like the holy Anchoress of old. Through prayer, and reflection, we may yet heal her Disturbed Mind.’

  Freddie and I glanced quietly at one another again.

  ‘Father—’ I began, my sickness rising, when Wilson’s entrance relieved me of the obligation of speaking. I felt awash with relief. Freddie looked at me once more, but now I did not return his glance. Wilson had bowed to my father, and then to us all, and finally, acknowledged me alone.

  ‘Mr Gabriel,’ he said. ‘A note.’ He presented me this communication upon his little silver salver.

  ‘From whom?’ asked Father.

  ‘It is indicated that the sender is Mrs Prendergast, Sir Alfred,’ said Wilson.

  ‘I will take it,’ said Father—and he did. ‘Wait, for we may have a response,’ he added to Wilson, who immediately turned invisible without leaving us, in the manner peculiar to good servants.

  I did not know if my father was aware I had proposed to Susannah; Freddie knew, but would not betray me. I could but hope that John had not witnessed it, nor heard of it from some domestic Spy. As Father had said—People Talk.

  ‘What business does the Prendergast relic have with you?’ Father asked, unfolding the paper and peering down at it.

  ‘I do not know,’ I said, still carefully avoiding Freddie’s eye.

  ‘I cannot read this,’ said Father. ‘Where is my quizzing-glass?’ When we were silent, he said, ‘Well?’

  ‘I am sure we do not know, Father,’ said Freddie. ‘Shall we send for Adley?’

  ‘No—no. Read it,’ he said, passing my note to Freddie.

  Freddie looked at it.

  ‘It is brief, Gabriel,’ he told me. ‘Mrs Prendergast asks that you attend her at home at your earliest convenience, even outside of the usual visiting-hours.’

  ‘How singular,’ said Father, looking at me. ‘Why?’

  I could not speak; I felt my cheeks aflame, and there was a ringing in my ears.

  ‘The lady does not indicate the reason for this visit,’ said Freddie, with a gentle voice.

  ‘When was this delivered?’ Father asked Wilson.

  ‘Moments before I brought it here, Sir Alfred.’

  ‘Prendergast has a ward, yes?’ said Father. ‘The girl. Comely, if one can look past the nose.’

  Father knew perfectly well Susannah was Mrs Prendergast’s ward; they were our nearest neighbours, and, what is more, Susannah had formed a close friendship with our cousin Charlotte, who was quite often with us. I do not know that he had ever spoken to her directly, but she had oft enough been our guest, and indeed we Mrs Prendergast’s. And I am sure I do not need to say that there was nothing at all objectionable about her nose.

  ‘Yes, Father,’ said I.

  ‘Susannah,’ said Freddie.

  ‘What is her parentage?’

  ‘Well, sir, Mr Prendergast holds office in Burma, and her mother has gone to her reward.’

  ‘Who was she?’ Father asked.

  ‘Miss Prendergast’s mother? I do not know who she was.’

  ‘Hmph. Money?’

  I paled with silent indignation. ‘I do not know,’ I said, and did not add what welled in my heart, which was that I certainly did not care if she came with a King’s Ransom, or nothing at all.

  ‘Well, the old woman is well enough off, given that garish pile of hers. I suppose there will be provision for the girl. You are not intending to swoon, are you, son?’

  I mumbled as deferentially as I could that a faint was not my intention.

  ‘You had better go,’ said Father. ‘See what Prendergast wants of you.’

  Before
John had said it, I had already thought to suggest we put down a carpet—not the Indian carpet, if Father chose to remove it, but something soft in duck-egg blue and white—and also, perhaps give Mamma a book-shelf, and a good Feather-bed, and perhaps to have the chimney of the old fire up there well swept, to ensure her comfort in the attic, and perhaps not be too simple about her meals, but rather give her the things most agreeable to her. Not Linzer torte, as it had become political, but marrow toast, cutlets, roasted quail, jugged hare, apple dumplings, and whatever else she should like. And to allow her any such Visitors as might wish to see her, outside our own intimate circle, and to retain her lady’s maid. And to make a case for daily turns about the winter garden.

  Later—this I would do later.

  As I made my exit, Father remarked to my brothers and the Doctor, ‘She was not a bad woman. I can only be glad that she bore me sons.’

  At the station, I spent the evening eating I know not what, for I cannot remember, and drinking rum, and I moved from a state of extreme hunger and drunkenness to satiation and sobriety, to hunger once again and a singularly buoyant sensation of neither drunkenness nor sobriety, but something beyond either. It passed my mind that I had nothing to offer in exchange for my food, whatever it may have been, and drink, but it also occurred to me that I had assisted in bringing the whale down, and that perhaps gave me licence to partake.

  The Creature was a full fifty feet, and night had long fallen when Stockworth and his men finally brought it in. More than one man called it a Murderous Beast, and worse, but, although I did not say it, I felt it could hardly be blamed for defending itself from our violent incursion into its own Home.

  The station was aflame with many lights in the dark and the black waves crested with white. Tam could not contain himself, and he leapt about in the freezing water. All hands were compelled to assist in heaving the beast ashore tail-first, but most hands were, like myself, profoundly drunk, and it was a slow and clumsy process. I stood amongst the men and pretended to heave, and the great corpse crept up the beach, and up, and up, until it was quite clear of the water, and we ceased our labour.