by Roxane Dhand
When Maisie told Marjorie to be ready to go into town after siesta time, the Aboriginal maid was not happy. Scrunching up her face, she thrust one hand into her apron pocket and rummaged her uncombed hair with the other. She inspected the cull of her scalp under her fingernails. ‘Why’s we doing that, Missus?’
‘You said you need spectacles, so I am taking you to an eye specialist.’
‘Wot? You and me?’
‘Yes.’ Maisie was confused. ‘You said you need “peepy gogglers”. You meant spectacles, I’m sure.’
‘That not gonna work.’
‘Why ever not? You need to see an oculist, so I’m taking you.’
‘No, Missus. Don’t work dat way. You not pickin’ up wot I’s puttin’ down.’
Maisie considered she was picking up far too well how things worked, or in some cases how they didn’t. She steepled her fingers together in a silent prayer for patience. ‘In what way, particularly with the spectacles, do I not understand?’
‘No. See, I can’t go in for the fiddly-doo-dah test thing-um in white man’s shop. I ain’t allowed.’
Maisie hitched up an expectant eyebrow. Marjorie knew the drill and waited for her prompt.
‘Yes, Marjorie?’
‘So, you do test thing-um for me.’
‘Marjorie, how can I possibly do that? Your eyes are yours, not mine! I don’t suffer from poor eyesight.’
‘Missus, sometimes in life you got to do fakin’, knows what I bin saying?’ She tapped her nose.
Maisie sighed. ‘All right. Let’s draw some letters on a page in different sizes. You have to tell me when you can’t see them clearly and I will try to convince the oculist.’
Marjorie tapped her fingertips together. ‘You startin’ to be a Buccaneer Bay woman, Missus. I’s a proud Black Marjorie!’
Maisie fanned out the calling cards on her desk with the dexterity of a croupier. Someone had to have an at-home on a Thursday afternoon. She needed advice on obtaining spectacles and didn’t know where to start. She pointed at a name and sucked her finger when she saw whom she would be visiting. There was nothing else for it. Desperate measures and all that.
An hour later, she was sitting on the verandah of Bishop McMahon and his wife, sipping tea in hundred-degree heat.
‘These are delicious sandwiches, Mrs McMahon,’ Maisie said, scanning the room. The hostess was wearing an unfortunate dress in mustard-coloured tartan, which did nothing to flatter her sallow complexion. The voice in Maisie’s head would not be still, her mother’s opinions still coming to mind before her own. Jumble-sale clothing. If you marry a vicar, Maisie, that is what you will have to look forward to: picking through the worst of society’s rejects.
The usual cluster of old biddies endorsed these at-home visits for ladies. With their rickety legs crossed tight at the ankle, they nodded in approval of Maisie’s presence and passed the time on a loop of recycled small talk. Others wiped crumbs from bristly chins. Tantalisingly, a box of cigarettes lay open on the table where the maid had deposited the afternoon-tea tray. Maisie’s hand itched to pick one up and fill her lungs with delicious, liberating smoke in plain view of this tongue-clicking set. Only loose women smoke, Maisie. It made her smile at how quickly she had become one, or perhaps that woman had always been lurking beneath the surface, desperate to break out. Still, she sat on her hand and put the devil behind her.
‘You are so sweet, Mrs Sinclair. Miss Locke, my companion, makes the most dainty cucumber sandwiches. She cuts the bread very thin. That’s the secret. Of course, our cook-boy sets and bakes the bread – under supervision, naturally – but he has got the hang of it at last. And we grow the cucumbers in the yard here. Our Aboriginal garden boy sees to that. Oh, that reminds me! How is your boy managing your husband’s magnificent croquet lawn?’
Maisie felt as though her stomach had been squeezed. Her lip trembled over her teeth. ‘Charlie – the garden boy – had an accident a few weeks ago. I think Maitland has organised a replacement or a stand-in until he’s better.’ She was waiting for a thunderbolt to smite her from on high and roast her for the lie. ‘Duc, our cook, is very competent. I rather leave him to the cooking. To both him and Marjorie, as a matter of fact.’
‘Do I know such a person in your household?’
‘I am sure you do. Marjorie is my maid.’ Maisie pushed back her shoulders and elongated her spine. Sit up straight, Maisie. A lady never slouches.
‘Oh, you mean Black Marjorie? Your lubra? I see! But you don’t mean to say that you let her work in the kitchen and touch your food?’
Maisie looked away. All the whites had ethnic cooks, but Aboriginal people were prohibited from any employment in the town involving the handling of food. She hadn’t planned to jump right in with the purpose of her visit, but she had no intention of devaluing her maid in public. ‘Mrs McMahon, I wonder if you know where I might have my eyes tested? I’m concerned that I am not able to read my patterns at the knitting circle, and the words in my hymn book at the Sunday service seem to shiver on the page like a mirage.’
Mrs McMahon’s personal bible of beliefs didn’t seem to include twenty–twenty vision as a Godly attribute, it transpired. ‘We don’t have an oculist, as such, resident in the Bay, Mrs Sinclair. A visiting specialist offers appointments every now and then, but I am not aware that we are expecting Mr Barnes from Perth anytime soon. Certainly not until the cyclone season is over. He won’t want to risk the steamer from Port Fremantle in a storm. I believe that there are Chinese men who claim expertise in Asia Place, but really, would you want to entrust your vision to an Oriental? The Chinese have appalling eyesight. They are renowned for it. I think you are going to have to dig deep, be patient and squint a little, like the rest of us.’
Maisie put down her teacup and patted her mouth with a napkin. She hadn’t planned, either, to be scolded like a school-girl by the bishop’s wife.
‘You are quite right, Mrs McMahon. How silly of me to bother about my own little problems when we have a town far needier than any of us here in this lovely room – like Aborigines with venereal disease and leprosy, and Japanese divers in the hospital maimed by the diving sickness. You are quite right. I should hang my head in shame, worrying about my eyesight. What must I be thinking?’
Mrs McMahon was temporarily lost for words, caught on her own barb. ‘Anyone for more tea?’ she boomed. ‘And, Augusta, I need to speak to you about the church flowers, they were a disgrace last week.’
Miss Locke, who had watched this exchange with an amused expression, seized her moment while her companion was ticking off the church’s senior workforce. Voice low, she cast the conversation in an alternative direction. ‘Do you remember our talk at the knitting circle? About European medical preferences?’
Maisie said that she did.
‘Maybe that would be a more profitable avenue to explore. Perhaps. For you?’ She looked down and stirred her tea. ‘With your eyesight problem.’
Maisie lifted the corners of her mouth and produced a grateful smile. She sat back in her chair and looked into the intelligent grey eyes in Miss Locke’s forty-something face. ‘Thank you, Miss Locke. That would seem to be a very sensible avenue to pursue. I wonder, if ever Mrs McMahon could spare you from your duties, might you care to join me for afternoon tea one day soon?’
The route Maisie took to the Japanese hospital from the bishop’s residence was not the most direct. She had time on her hands and wouldn’t be missed at home. Maitland had no interest in what she did and lacked every conceivable social grace she had been brought up to embrace. Her journey led her through the hinterland of backstreets, a wilderness wound together by narrow lanes wedged between the wide main streets. It took her past long stretches of grimy housing, the sour stench of cat wee burning the air. Duc had told her there was a prolific population of feral cats in Buccaneer Bay. It kept the rats down, he said. Hurrah for the cats.
She wedged her forefinger under her nostrils – blocking things out had now
become a reflex – and picked up her feet; the ground underfoot was too hot to dawdle.
The Chinese, who doubled as cooks, gardeners and tailors, ran many of the businesses she passed on little alleyways and wider lanes until she came to the Seafarer’s Rest Hotel. She knew that William Cooper resided there, and her subconscious poked at her with a sharpened stick. Is this why you have walked through here and not taken the more direct route? Are you hoping to run into him? He has no interest in you. You made a complete fool of yourself the last time you saw him. He is engaged to be married to the vacuous Miss Montague, who will never make him happy. And you are married, Maisie. Or had you forgotten?
She passed a man she recognised from one of the endless parties she’d hosted. Maitland wanted to be seen in certain circles – that much she had worked out – but his reasons for schmoozing the second-tier whites eluded her. This man was a local accountant with a taste for profit. A ‘money squeezer’, her father would have called him. He was wearing spotless white – all the men wore white – and a sun helmet.
It’s downpour season, she thought. What a nonsensical affectation.
The money squeezer was intent on a spot in front of him, and did not look up. He probably hadn’t even seen her.
I wonder if he knows what a valuable asset I am on Maitland’s balance sheet?
She knew her husband had plenty of money – they all did, these affluent bungalow dwellers. Money made with little regard for anyone else, by financing and trading with the pearling industry from the snug safety of shore.
Maisie stopped dead. She was now, she realised, one of the white-faced of Buccaneer Bay, a community that seemed to her to be struggling with its own identity. Within the white population, from Blair the mayor to Mister Gregory, who emptied the night pans and collected the rubbish, there was a sliding scale of respectability. That wasn’t so different from England. What she could not abide was the deeply assumed superiority by all the white people who thought they were kings – in a country that had no royalty.
The smell in Asia Place pulled her out of her thoughts. It came from everywhere – the reek of mildew, tropical rot and desperation. Large iron buildings stood alongside tiny shops selling everything from diver’s boots to Oriental clothing. There were no windows, only open slits under eaves ribbed with rusting bars. She saw that some of the shopkeepers were shuttering up their premises although it was barely mid-afternoon.
The air was oppressive, worse than normal, and the humidity hotly suffocating. Strands of hair, escapees from her neatly pinned chignon, clung to her neck. The doctor was on the hospital verandah, leaning over the lattice, a cigarette between two nicotine-stained fingers.
‘Doctor Shin,’ she said, as she climbed the steps and held out a grubby hand. She had left her gloves behind at tea. ‘Please forgive me.’
He lifted a neatly trimmed eyebrow. ‘For what offence?’
‘For not making an appointment to see you. For not coming back when I promised I would. For not taking an interest in your hospital. You must think me shallow and indifferent and a complete mess.’
The doctor laughed. ‘I think nothing of the sort, Mrs Sinclair. Indeed, I rarely have the luxury of time for idle thought. However, I can assure you that my musings would never reach such a conclusion and I am not sure that you did pledge to return, so cannot be judged negligent.’
Maisie placed her finger on the lattice and absently followed the wooden outline. ‘Then I am more guilty than I feared. I have plenty of moments for action, and too much time for thoughts that I do not act upon.’
Doctor Shin took a pull on his cigarette and exhaled the smoke in a prolonged sigh. He rubbed his forehead. The rain was blowing through the lattice, leaving greasy puddles on the decking.
She thought about Charlie, took a deep breath and cast about for something else to ask first. ‘I don’t really understand why the Asiatics crew the luggers, Doctor Shin. A good number of the whites in the Bay do manual work, so why not on the boats? It’s just that everyone seems so concerned about keeping the races separate here. This exception strikes me as out of place.’
Doctor Shin finished his cigarette and ground out the stub under his heel. The wind gathered up the smoke and spiralled it towards the sky. ‘They are here because they are willing to work. Because the alternative is a life of grinding poverty in the countries they have left behind. Lugger-work is unpleasant, and they are cheap to employ, Mrs Sinclair. But nature has favoured the Japanese diver. He seems, from my observations, to be almost immune to inflammation of the ears, and to bleeding from the nose and ears when diving. There are more Japanese diving here than any other race. They are just as susceptible to paralysis as other races, though.’
‘Is paralysis the only danger the Japanese divers face?’
‘Sadly, no. The Japanese divers frequently suffer from the beri-beri disease.’
Maisie shook her head. ‘I am afraid I have no idea what that is. Is it contagious?’
The doctor sighed. ‘No. Not in my view. Divers suffer an unvaried diet of tinned and salted food for nine months of the year, and eat a good deal of white, polished rice with few vegetables and little fruit. The disease can be as deadly as the diver’s paralysis, and many of the symptoms are similar to it – fluid-filled limbs, inability to walk and breathing difficulties. If not treated, beri-beri will certainly lead to loss of life.’
‘Is there not a cure?’
Doctor Shin produced a packet of cigarettes from his coat pocket. He tapped one out and lit up. ‘Yes. Fresh fruit and vegetables, dried peas and beans, or unpolished rice, and a squeeze of lemon or lime juice in a cup of tea.’
‘And shall the white divers be at risk of this?’
‘Almost certainly. Until just now, the only white man aboard the luggers will have been an occasional shell-opener or a hands-on master pearler fearful that his crew might steal from him.’
Maisie brightened. ‘I’m thinking of taking out fresh fruit and vegetables to the men on my husband’s supply schooner. That’s bound to help them stay well.’
Doctor Shin shook his head. ‘While that is a laudable idea, there is no way for the men to keep fresh produce from spoiling.’
‘Yes, my maid said that.’
‘But if you were very determined to try, lemons and limes can last for a few weeks if stored out of the direct sun. You could tell the divers that.’
Maisie looked at him and smiled. ‘I will certainly do that and tell them that it was your suggestion to keep them in good health.’
They stood for a moment in silence.
Doctor Shin took a long pull on his cigarette. ‘Was there something else?’
Maisie bit her lip and swerved round the question she longed to ask. ‘And how is our gardener, Charlie?’
The black eyes clouded. ‘He has gone now.’
All the blood seemed to rush from her face. ‘He died?’
‘No. Charlie has gone back to his mob. He was very sick for a while, but he was able to leave, eventually.’
‘It is a relief to know that he is better.’
‘If that is all, Mrs Sinclair, I have much work to do.’
‘Just a quick question before you go, Doctor Shin.’
Doctor Shin pasted on his best listening face. ‘Mrs Sinclair?’
‘How do I go about having my maid’s eyes tested? She needs spectacles and insists that no-one will be prepared to help her in Buccaneer Bay by dint of her colour, and …’
The doctor smiled. ‘Make an appointment for her on your way out, Mrs Sinclair. In the great scheme of things, eyes are easy to fix.’
Maisie felt her heart pumping in her chest. She could see the doctor was anxious to get back to his work. I can’t ask him, and yet…
Doctor Shin pointed to a chair. His voice was very quiet. ‘Do sit down, Mrs Sinclair. I believe we are playing cat-and-mouse with the real reason for your visit.’
She sat down and pulled at the neck of her blouse. Without looking up she sa
id, ‘Is it normal for a man to avoid all physical contact with his new wife? To have never once come near her, even on her wedding night?’
CHAPTER 12
THE NIGHT BEFORE THEY set sail, three days after they were supposed to have left, Coop couldn’t sleep. The intense heat had not abated and he had again dragged his bedding outside. Backwards and forwards, he played a never-ending game with the elements. When he tried to sleep in his room, the air hung hot and oppressive like a suffocating blanket. On the balcony, where it was marginally cooler, insects swarmed out of the darkness; he squashed mosquitos one after another until the fabric of his shirt was blotched crimson with his own blood. He could feel the burn of the sun in his skin and prayed it would be cooler at sea. The Japanese diver accompanying them had taken a lot of convincing to dive before the end of the cyclone season, and the wait had almost driven him mad.
Coop sank back on the pillow and closed his eyes, but sleep would not come. His mind swirled in uncharted seas, keeping rest from him. Even when he did sleep, a face wandered across his dreams: Maisie Sinclair. His heart bumped uncomfortably against his ribs at the thought of her and a shiver of desire edged its way down his spine. He rubbed a hand over his chin and wished that he’d shaved more carefully before his visit. He’d got sloppy since arriving in the Bay; she would have seen the dark stubble and thought poorly of him.
Had she known, he wondered for the umpteenth time, that he could barely keep his eyes off her the whole time he’d been there? That he’d stared, wretched with envy, at the delicate oval of her face as she lay on the floor like an alabaster sculpture? That he’d been almost overcome by the urge to pick her up, to keep her safe within his arms? And yet why had she been drunk at barely ten in the morning? Was there some deep unhappiness in her marriage that had turned her to the bottle? Despite his torment, he smiled in the dark, clutching at her words like hope: Tell him I’m busy. She hadn’t stirred herself for her husband, but had made time for him.