A Treacherous Country

by K. M. Kruimink

  ‘They were not poisoned,’ said the elder child to the younger.

  ‘They awoke, for they were not poisoned, and swooped in, and caught the Murderer, who confessed everything, and he and the Duke were sentenced to death, and were boiled alive the very next day. The King’s daughter became a Queen, and ruled the kingdom for sixty years, doing very well by the Economy in her reign.

  ‘And the moral of the story is: Uneasy lies the head that wears the Crown.’

  Susannah’s farewell had been subdued, which I hoped indicated love. Her face was half shadowed by her bonnet. She wore a dark watered silk which gave her the wild look of one just in from a storm. We shook hands very neatly, under the watchful eye of Mrs Prendergast, and the disapproving eye of my father.

  ‘This child you are having my son find,’ said Father to Mrs Prendergast. ‘This Maginn girl.’

  ‘She would be a child no longer, for she was sent away some thirty years ago,’ said Mrs Prendergast.

  ‘Very well. This—woman. She was sent as a convict?’

  ‘Yes, Sir Alfred, she was.’

  ‘And she is your Relative?’

  ‘Yes, indeed. My Great-Niece.’

  Father let the merest hint of a smile twitch the corners of his mouth. ‘And you have not thought to seek her before now?’

  ‘I have,’ said the old lady. ‘I have thought it many times.’

  In the mean cottage of the Cook family, the Neighbour materialised from the inky dark of the far room. The baby was curled against her shoulder, evidently asleep, caught proficiently there by one great arm.

  ‘How is Mrs Cook?’ I asked.

  ‘How do you think?’ she snapped. ‘She will have her husband’s body brought here, at your convenience,’ she told us, and left us once more for the depths of the cottage.

  ‘Did the King wear his Crown to bed?’ the younger child asked the elder, as we went away.

  ‘No,’ said the elder child. ‘It is a Symbol.’

  ‘I do not know what that means,’ said the younger child.

  ‘Perhaps neither do I.’

  THAT IS A SENSIBLE CONCLUSION

  The most discreet method we could manage to transport Cook’s body from the shipyard to his house was to parade in daylight’s last fiery burst before night through the streets of Hobart-town with the whaleboat upon our shoulders and Cook laid out in state within. There were several carts at the shipyard, and I suggested we put Cook in one of these, and cover him respectfully with blankets, and wheel him to Mrs Cook’s, but I was overruled unanimously. Mrs Heron had stayed behind with Mrs Cook, and so we walked, with Mary going ahead of us and the boat painfully upon our shoulders, and my ankles freezing, and my feet coming out of my moist boots, amongst the evening-crawlers of the town. We were neither stopped nor challenged, and the only person who paid us any attention was a tiny old man with a beard down to his knees, who asked us very politely what we were doing.

  ‘Carrying our boat,’ said Byrne, and the old man nodded and wandered away, his hands clasped professorially behind his back, and his beard rippling in the breeze.

  I had not noticed the hill was so steep when we had first gone to the Cooks’ house, but now, with our burden, I felt we were climbing a sheer cliff. By the time we arrived, my eyes were swimming, and my arms were certainly on fire.

  Mary went into the house and brought Mrs Heron out to see. The latter lady gazed at us with eyes gone milky with sympathetic grief. ‘Why did you bring the boat?’ she asked.

  ‘It was only right,’ said Jack.

  ‘It does not make any sense.’

  Mrs Heron was a woman after my own heart, I thought, as we lowered the boat. ‘Take his head,’ said William to me. There was the sound of mud sucking from boots when I sank my fingers into the head of the shroud, and my hands came away thick with a clear slime. No one else seemed to notice this, and I became aware that it was not so, and there was no slime at all. I put my hands back upon the shroud, and helped carry him inside, as Pendle and Jack tipped the whaleboat against the side of the house.

  ‘Are you still drunk?’ William whispered to me.

  ‘What? No!’ I hissed in reply, and straightened my shoulders.

  The children had gone, and so had the Neighbour, and the house seemed seven times larger with only the pale little matrons Cook and Heron within, and Mary, and a Priest of some description, who was smaller and paler still. Cook on the kitchen table, however, shrank the place back down again, until it seemed I could hardly move for the presence of the corpse.

  We stood around with our hats off, awaiting the Priest’s word, but he stood silent and with bowed head until Mrs Heron said, ‘Very well, gentlemen. Thank you. You may go.’

  ‘Will you not come with us?’ said Jack to Mrs Heron.

  ‘No. Mary and I shall remain here to-night, and sit up with Mrs Cook.’

  ‘I cannot leave you here, madam,’ he said.

  Mrs Cook fired one red spark in each cheek. ‘And why not?’ she asked. ‘Why cannot the lady stay here with me?’

  And so, meekly, we departed. Pendle, Byrne and the Scot told us they were going to find whores. I thought of Maria Regina of the interesting black eyes, who had talked to me in such a frank and friendly way on my first night in the colony—a mere three nights ago! I hoped she had hung up her garters in the meantime, and found a nice man to marry, or had come into some money, and was sitting bundled safely by a kindly hearth somewhere, with a cat on her lap and a glass of sherry by her side. I put her into that pleasant reality in my mind, and kept her there. And my mind slipped from that scene to my mother in her cold attic-room, quite alone, and Trapped, a decaying old carpet under her feet. And then I thought back to Maria Regina strolling easily up to me in the tap-room, plump and vivacious, giving no indication she was not perfectly content with her life as it was.

  We lingered on the muddy corner by the Cooks’ house. Pendle, Byrne and the Scot were gone, and William looked after them, and said he might go to the Cock and Bale, and rest himself by the great hearth there, and ponder things over a jug of wine. ‘Come with me, if you like, Fox,’ he said to me. ‘Thank you; that is a kind invitation, but I must offer my regrets, for I have already accepted an invitation to Jack’s mother’s place,’ I said, feeling immensely awkward. Jack inclined his head. My wet clothes, bundled as they were, hung heavily from my hand.

  ‘Ah, yes,’ said William.

  ‘Shall we meet again?’

  ‘I do not know,’ he said, with a smile. ‘It is you who are the proponent of Fate. What say you?’

  ‘Yes, I hope so. I have been glad of your company.’

  ‘I have been glad of yours.’

  ‘I must confess something to you, William,’ I said, taking a steadying breath.

  ‘What is it, Gabriel?’ he said with an air of good-natured mockery.

  ‘I thought you a Cannibal, when first I met you.’

  William started. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because you have bad teeth, and are Irish,’ I said simply. ‘Please forgive me.’ The words hung in the air a moment before whispering away.

  ‘Well!—you amaze me rather. I cannot forgive you for calling my teeth bad, when yours are like an old woman’s fingernails. But you are English, and so your ignorance is only to be expected. But why—why a Cannibal, Gabriel? The Irish are called many things, but I did not know we were thought of thus.’

  ‘I had some bad advice, and I am very sorry that I listened to it.’

  ‘There was a Cannibal Irishman here, some years back,’ William conceded. ‘He had stolen some boots back in Ireland, that is why he was here. But he was not the only Cannibal in his party, and he did keep company with some English, as well as Irish. So if I am a Cannibal on the strength of that, then so too are you, my friend. And now, I go to the Cock and Bale, to drink, sup, and rest. And to buy a jug of wine to take back to the station for my father, who very seldom has wine.’

  ‘I am a Cannibal,’ said Jack.

  �
��You are droll,’ said William.

  ‘Why is your father here?’ I asked him.

  ‘He was transported—so I followed him, that he would have a friend.’

  My mother sat at the garret window, not looking at me.

  ‘William, I do not quite understand you,’ I said.

  ‘Do you mean generally, or specifically in this instance, about the wine, and my father?’

  ‘Generally, I think.’

  ‘That is simply as it is. In fact—nor do I quite understand you.’

  ‘William—’

  ‘Yes? Gabriel, it is cold, and will only grow colder, the longer we stand here.’

  ‘Yes—please—I shall not detain you very much longer. Only tell me where I might find that German man who sold me Tigris. I should like to find her again and have her back. Should he be near the alleyway in which we conducted our business?’

  ‘Perhaps. Why do you wish to find that horse? She was not an extremely remarkable Creature.’

  ‘No, but she is mine, I suppose, and I did grow fond of her, and she bore me patiently enough.’

  ‘I do not believe she is yours any longer,’ he said.

  ‘Who is Tigris?’ asked Jack.

  ‘The horse that I bought and was stolen from me,’ I said.

  ‘Or: the stolen horse that he rented and that was stolen back,’ said William.

  ‘Odd name,’ said Jack.

  ‘No,’ said William. ‘The Tigris River, a tributary of Lake Hazar, in Turkey. Come, Jack, you were schooled somewhere or other, were you not? Tigris and her sire were Turkoman.’

  ‘William O’Riordan, your learned remark reminds me that once you told me you speak French,’ I said. ‘May I ask you a question about it?’

  William threw his hands up in an attitude of despair. ‘Very well. I surrender. You might ask whatever you wish, but Gabriel, you do have so very many questions for me! Come, let us walk in the direction of the Cock and Bale, at least, and warm ourselves by the exercise. Or we might walk towards your lady mother’s house, Jack—I do not care. Let us go.’

  And so we set off together, downhill, in what I thought was the direction of the water.

  ‘I do. I have nothing but questions, and not only for you. In this case, I fear I rather misused my French tutor, and did not learn well when he tried to teach me. Not even holidays in the South of France could drill it into my thick head, for everybody speaks English there anyway. Will you make a translation for me?’

  ‘You insult my teeth, and are ignorant about my country and my countrymen, and then ask me a favour?’ He was unsmiling, but he spoke gently, and his eyes were kind.

  ‘I am sorry, William.’

  ‘How long will it take?’

  ‘No time at all—it is a line only. De qui je me fie Dieu me garde.’

  ‘Oh, that is a proverb,’ he said, with a dismissive gesture. ‘Its substance is something like, God guard me from those I trust.’

  I offered my hand, and he wrapped his arms around me, and kissed my cheek, and when he released me, he left a cold place in my own arms where he had stood. ‘Silly man,’ he said.

  ‘He is most certainly a Communist,’ said Jack, watching him go away.

  ‘I truly do not know what that means.’

  On my first night in Van Diemen’s Land, I had met William. On my second night, I had walked alone into the station, harpoons over my shoulder. And on the third, I had sat at a table with Mr and Mrs Heron as they told me of the end of all their dreams. And now, on the fourth night, I was shown by a girl with a Welsh look about her into the third-grandest house in a colony of no truly grand houses, wearing a set of clothes that was shrinking by the minute. Jack and I were put into a drawing-room, and were seated on velvet chairs, and offered port and biscuits, by that same tidy young miss. I did not wish to put my bundle down, for it was still damp, and she took it from me, and told me she would hang my things before the kitchen-fire, and get them nice and dry for me.

  ‘They shall be stiff as boards when she brings them back,’ Jack told me. As he sipped from his dainty glass, telling me a little about the Artworks hanging upon the walls, I saw for the first time just how out-of-place that young man was at the station, out in the freezing cold, harpooning whales. There were dainties and doilies and covers and cosies neatly put upon every surface in that room. Looming above us upon several walls were great glowing oil paintings, and strange little handiworks displayed here and there—every sign, in short, of a respectably idle life. Jack himself, though younger and handsomer, gazed down at me from a painting hung above the mantelpiece. He looked to be not yet one-and-twenty in the picture, and sat with his hand upon an harpoon.

  The flesh Jack arose to take down a small wooden frame from the wall and to bring it to me, that I might admire his mother’s work of arranging dead moths into precisely geometric forms. I had reached deep within myself to muster some faint shadow of approbation for that item when I was compelled to rise to my feet, for a tall and slender lady entered the room, holding her arms open to Jack. I felt the seams of my ill-fitting costume creak and strain as I rose to my feet.

  It was some quirk of Nature I had not seen before that made the grown son shorter than the mother, but other than that odd discrepancy, Jack and Mrs Montserrat were very alike. She had his hazel eyes—rather, I suppose, he had hers—and chestnut hair, though hers was rather greyer than his.

  When Jack presented me to this lady, she pressed my hand warmly for a moment, and bade me be seated once more. She was polished in a way I did not even realise I had missed until I met her, and her charmingly easy and sociable manner, in her well-appointed house, brought the spectre of my mother before me so strongly I found I had to rise and make an agitated lap around the room in order to prevent myself from screaming and shouting, or committing some act of violence against the dead moths in their little frame.

  ‘I met Mr Fox at the station, Mamma,’ said Jack. ‘He brought me a pair of American harpoons as a trade.’

  ‘I am sure they were very interesting, but my poor head cannot really handle the matter of harpoons,’ said Mrs Montserrat.

  ‘You are telling me I am boring you,’ said Jack with a smile.

  ‘Not quite—are you in the harpooning business, Mr Fox?’ she asked me.

  ‘No, madam, I am not. I came upon them by circumstance, and had some information that I might sell them at Montserrat Station, for I was having some trouble divesting myself of them.’

  ‘And, instead of selling, you traded them with my son?’

  ‘Jack has kindly indicated that I might keep the costume I am wearing, which he gave me when my own became too wet to wear.’

  ‘Oh, you poor man, Mr Fox! His things are tiny on you!’

  ‘Thank you, yes. Thus, although I am most profoundly grateful, Jack, I shall consider these clothes a loan, and return them to you—for they do not fit me, truly. I have been going about half bare—forgive me, madam!’ I said, but she was unperturbed at the mention of unclothed flesh. ‘And therefore, Jack, I give you the harpoons. Please accept them as a gift, for I have but little to give, and wish to give something.’

  ‘I thank you, and although you are most heartily welcome to keep the clothing, I can see that it does not fit you well. But I must say—did you not pay attention to O’Riordan?’ Jack asked me. ‘You cannot give them to me, for you are participant in a convoluted system of Harmonic Exchange.’

  ‘Oh—yes, he did say something to that effect.’

  ‘Therefore, we can trust that you will receive something in return for the irons.’

  ‘If you ascribe to his conceit, which I do not.’

  ‘You ought,’ said Jack.

  ‘It is refreshing that you two young people are so charmingly familiar with one another, so soon in your acquaintance,’ said Mrs Montserrat, and I could not divine if she were truly refreshed, or if she were making a pointed remark of some kind. I had never yet plumbed the politics of the human Heart, particularly in that
place, where everybody’s intentions were slightly unavailable to me. Mrs Montserrat could clearly hear my thoughts echoing in my own head, for she smiled very graciously at me and said, ‘He who can describe how his heart is ablaze is burning on a small pyre,’ which I gathered was some quotation or other. Mamma was also fond of quotations, adages, couplets and other such little lines, often producing them at the pertinent point in conversation, or noting them in her diary. Thinking of this, I was struck by a sharp pain, as real as any pain with a physical cause, in my chest.

  Mamma had constantly kept a diary before she was put away. There was a full shelf of these in the library: little leather-bound volumes brimming with words of consequence to her, all looping across the pages in her elegant hand. Each entry began with the date, and the day, and the weather, and would continue on to detail all her comings-and-goings since the previous day. She wrote a great deal about my brothers and me, such that reading the diaries she had kept when I was a young child was like lifting a heavy stone and finding beneath it the ground seething and boiling with hidden beetles. How many things did I come upon in those volumes that gave me a start of familiarity, and the sudden re-introduction of a memory I had not known I possessed?

  Saturday, the twenty-fifth of March in the year 1820. It rained in the night, and there was a frost this morning, but then the sun came out and it was passing fine. With my morning letters, I received word from Alfred that he should remain away some little time longer than he had at first intended. Later, I received Lady F. and Miss F., Mrs P., the Misses H. The visiting-hour was drawing to its close when the Misses H. were here, and we are quite informal together, and so we took together a turn about the rose-garden. There we came across Freddie and Gabriel tucked behind the old wall bordering the southern end. Freddie had removed not only both shoes but also his socks, in order that he might put these items over his hands, and amuse Gabriel with a little puppet-show of two sock-creatures who seemed to wish nothing more than to make little Gabriel their King. He was much delighted with this display—indeed, they both were. We crept away that we would not disturb them at their play. I am glad it was the Misses H. with me to witness this; Lady F. is quite old-fashioned about her own children, and I do not yet know what Mrs P. would make of such a funny thing.