The Pearler's Wife

by Roxane Dhand

  ‘You might have to help me. The wind is a little tricky.’

  He leaned towards her and cupped the end of the cigarette in his hands. ‘Now try.’ His skin was warm under her fingertips, the flame bright in the darkness.

  She breathed in his tobacco scent and felt she was falling. She turned and grasped the rail like a diver on a wreck. She would not let herself feel ashamed for touching him. Below, the ocean was mottled with moon shadows, and silence stretched out like a carpet.

  ‘Is something wrong?’ Coop said.

  Sunday supper had become their private affair.

  Maisie had spent the past week counting down the days, allowing herself one thought of him each hour until, in her dreams, there was no restraint. In her dreams, she sailed on the seas with her dark-eyed captain, bathing herself in the luxury of him; she did not have to eke out the minutes until their Sunday was over, because their time together was not defined. Maisie knew that the fleeting freedom she felt would end the next day, when she sailed back to shore.

  She was excited, confused, nervous. Tonight, she had decided she would tell him what she’d wanted to say for weeks. She would tell him that she loved him; but now that the moment was here, the words would not slip past her lips. She was not free to utter them and he was not free to hear them. So, she clamped them inside, her secret unshared.

  She stood for some time smoking her cigarette, her eyes fixed on the water. ‘Tell me something about you that no-one else knows.’

  He half-turned next to her and raised his hand to his forehead. He said in a mock-serious voice, ‘My middle name is Hereward.’

  Maisie tried to hold her laughter in place. ‘That’s a weighty load to bear.’

  ‘Indeed it is, Mrs Sinclair.’ He grinned. ‘And now the load is half yours! And what of you, Maisie? What secret can we share?’

  She felt a different tremble in her legs and put a hand on the rail to support herself. ‘I went through Maitland’s desk.’

  Their evening was drawing to a close and she felt spooked, as if an ill wind was blowing towards them. Coop leaned against her.

  She saw the sweat glistening in his hair, could feel his breath on her face. Could he sense that she felt faint? ‘The day we arrived in Fremantle on the steamer, you were wearing patterned socks.’

  ‘That’s an odd thing to say.’

  ‘It was the first thing I noticed about you. It struck me that you’d completely misread the occasion.’

  ‘My father sells socks for a living.’

  ‘My father’s a judge, but I don’t wear a wig.’

  ‘I hate anything dull. I am scared my life will be beige and flat with no contours or colour, so I wear bright socks to remind me to climb mountains.’

  ‘Is that why you came to Australia. To find a mountain?’

  ‘The challenge excited me.’

  Maisie turned her face away and made herself say out loud, ‘Enough for you to sign your own death warrant?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You signed a document saying that you would only get commission when you hauled up more than two-and-a-half tons of shell. At the rate you’re going on the beds you’re diving, you’re never going to get there.’ She saw the clench of his jaw and felt him tense. ‘That’s bad enough.’ She took a deep breath. ‘What’s far worse, though, is that you agreed that you will hold Maitland blameless should you be injured or killed while diving in his employ.’

  He was quiet for some time, as still as stone. Eventually, he turned her back to face him and pressed her hand in his. Fleetingly, there was something in his expression that made her think she was on the brink of hearing a confession of which he wasn’t proud.

  ‘You have to help me with another favour then, Maisie.’

  She pulled her hand away. ‘Another?’

  ‘You have to burn that page.’

  ‘If he catches me,’ she said after a pause, ‘I don’t know what he’ll do.’

  ‘You saw what I signed.’

  She nodded. ‘The pearl masters hatched their plan weeks ago.’

  ‘Did you know?’ His gaze seared her face.

  ‘You’re staring at me.’

  ‘Eye contact’s a good thing. You can tell when someone’s lying.’

  ‘Maitland had some of the master pearlers round for drinks a few months back, before the cyclone. Marjorie overheard them tossing coins and placing bets.’

  ‘Go on.’

  The words came out in a rush. ‘The bottom line is you’re too expensive. The pearlers are paying lip service to the government, counting on the fact that the Bay is too far away to police, and are working together to make sure the white-diver experiment fails. I’m guessing they were placing bets on who did what to whom to sabotage the scheme. There is no doubt in my mind that you are in the gravest danger, Coop.’

  ‘JB will watch my back.’

  ‘What if something happens to him?’

  ‘Forewarned is forearmed. Isn’t that how the expression goes? I promise I’ll be careful, but you have to get rid of that page.’

  Anxiety pinched her face.

  ‘I know you’re afraid, but that’s not everything, is it?’ Coop said.

  Digging her nails into her palms, Maisie looked out across the vast stretch of water and thought she could make out the lighthouse. She couldn’t help herself and blurted out, ‘I hear you are engaged to be married to Miss Montague.’

  A gust of laughter escaped Coop, but then he caught Maisie’s sombre expression. He let out a low whistle.

  ‘She told me that you’d kissed at the Welcome Dance and that after that things were understood between you.’

  He looked at the deck, his face flushed. ‘It’s true about the kiss. She launched herself at me when I was fetching your drink. The rest, though … I don’t know where she got that from.’

  ‘She thinks life’s a romantic novel, Coop. She’s longing for something that doesn’t exist and thinks she’s found it in you. You are the knight who is going to whisk her away on his white horse. If she persists with the fantasy and tells her father, you will have a far worse enemy who will make Maitland look like a beginner. Blair has no scruples; he thinks he’s above the law.’

  Coop paused and flicked the butt of his cigarette over the balustrade. ‘It can’t be easy for Dorothea having no mother to turn to. The day I met her she prattled on and on about how busy her life is in the Bay, although now I suspect she spends a lot of time on her own, with her heart-fluttering stories. The reality is that she’s lonely and neglected.’

  Maisie listened to his words, wondering if he realised he had almost precisely described her own situation. ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘I danced with her on a whim, and I’m going to have to deal with the consequence of that. She’ll be hurt, but I must find a way to let her down lightly.’

  ‘Yes,’ Maisie said, polishing the deck with the toe of her shoe. ‘But please don’t ask me to help you with that.’

  He drew her into him then and held her, hand cradling her head, and kissed her hard. She had dreamed of this moment, of what a kiss would feel like and how he would taste. He crushed her to him, opening her lips with his own. As her innermost self started to melt, she expected a parental admonishment to resound in her head about virtue and morals, and how far she could expect to fall from grace. But there was nothing, except her own voice whispering his name.

  ‘Why did you marry him, Maisie?’ he spoke into her hair.

  She placed a hand on his cheek and thought despairingly, Because he asked and my parents said yes.

  Maitland was dreaming. An exhausted stupor weighted his limbs like shackles and he was frightened. Did ghosts seek revenge on the living?

  Something had dragged him back through the years to his schooldays, and now there he was – caught up among the furtive conclave in the lavatories.

  ‘Come on, Maitland. Let’s see your goods.’

  His three assailants pinioned his arms behind
him and pulled his trousers down past his knees.

  ‘Let’s unpack his crate,’ one of the boys jeered. ‘Look at his box of tricks.’

  ‘What’s the matter? I’m the same as the rest of you.’ His shrill adolescent voice quavered.

  Three pairs of eyes stared at him.

  ‘Look, he’s wet himself,’ someone laughed.

  ‘Ladyfinger!’ someone else sniggered.

  The door burst open. ‘What the hell’s going on?’ It was Blair.

  Maitland buttoned his trousers, his cheeks ablaze, burning hot like a bonfire. ‘They’ll be sorry,’ he said, his voice barely audible.

  ‘Yes,’ said Blair. ‘They will.’

  Maitland woke with a jolt, the three boys disappearing into shadow.

  ‘You look bloody awful,’ Blair said.

  ‘How long have you been here?’

  ‘Long enough to see you thrashing about under the covers.’

  ‘Doc says I’ve got Barcoo fever.’

  ‘That’s bad. Chlorodyne and brandy’s about the only thing for it. Get Duc to soak some potatoes in vinegar overnight and then boil them up and mash them. Bland food’s what you need. You got the trots as well?’

  ‘Opposite. My belly is rock-hard and I can’t stomach food. The smell makes me puke.’

  ‘Have you been drinking contaminated water?’

  ‘How would I know?’ he said irritably. ‘We use the rain tanks here in the house, but I might have picked something up at the Seafarer’s.’

  ‘When were you up there?’

  ‘Last Tuesday. I was fine till Thursday morning, when the puking started up and Maisie began to fuss.’

  ‘They found a body up there a few nights back.’

  Maitland raised an eyebrow. ‘Is that so?’

  Blair picked at the edge of a fingernail. ‘Trussed up like a chicken. Not pretty, apparently.’

  ‘How’d he die?’

  ‘Not exactly sure, Mait.’ Blair leaned in close, his thin, colourless lips close to Maitland’s ear. ‘But the doc said he had some “unusual” injuries.’

  Maitland sipped his drink and pushed back against the pillows. ‘What’s more unusual is why, after six years of putting myself forward, do the blokes suddenly think I’m fit to head up the Association?’

  ‘Extraordinary General Meeting because I’m standing down and going off to Europe for a bit with Dorothea. I need to get her away from here.’

  ‘That’s a bit sudden, isn’t it? You never mentioned you were thinking of a trip.’

  ‘I wasn’t till last night when Dorothea announced her engagement to your bloke Cooper.’

  Maitland stared at him. ‘When did that happen? He’s been on the lugger for weeks.’

  ‘At that bloody dance, she says. I’m taking no chances. She’s over twenty-one, so doesn’t need my permission to get married, but we can’t let them anywhere near each other. She’s got another three years until she’s twenty-five, and won’t see any of her trust money until then. You hear what I’m saying? That’s three more years I’m to grind out. I’m not going to let it slip through my hands, so I’m getting her out of the way, and you need to step up plans to get rid of him.’

  ‘Where are you thinking of going?’

  ‘Paris, London, New York. Wherever we do business. That fancy new steamer the Atticus pulls in here soon, so it seemed a good time to go.’

  Maitland squeezed his glass and took another mouthful. ‘Why are you really off on a trip, Blair? The start of the season’s not a wise time to be away.’

  ‘They’re sending a government chap up from Perth to look at what’s going down here with the white diving blokes. Check tallies and progress, that sort of thing. Visit their pet project.’

  Maitland nodded, draining the last of his drink. ‘So, I’m the one with his head on the block if the government bloke smells a rat.’

  Lines deepened across Blair’s forehead. He cracked his finger joints, one by one. ‘A few of the white divers are dead already and I’ve just dealt with another.’ He pushed his hat off his forehead with the whisky bottle. ‘I fixed that stupid bugger Jack Morris, with his Navy references and his sodding Admiralty staging manual. I paired him up with that old cronk Ropin, who’s too old to still be alive, let alone go to sea. Sent them about thirty miles off the coast saying there was tons of shell down deep. The silly git nearly bit my hand off.’

  Maitland elbowed himself up the bed. ‘Then what?’

  Blair necked some whisky from the bottle. ‘The tender’s too addled to understand his signals. He said Morris was up and down all day, yanking on his lifeline, so he kept hauling him up.’

  ‘Staging him?’

  Blair let out a scoffing laugh. ‘What do you think? Even if he understood the principle of rest stops, the old bugger can’t count to ten without using his fingers.’

  ‘How’d he croak it?’

  ‘Bends. Blackout. Bonne nuit. Buried him out at sea.’

  Maitland leaned over the side of the bed and retched again into the bucket, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘What now?’

  ‘You need to fix that bastard Cooper,’ Blair went on. ‘We need to spread the damage among us. I’ve done one and Hanson’s seen to two of his. Send a message to Sid. Maisie can tell him something or other when he brings over the shell for the tally next weekend. Get him back to shore and you fix up what needs to be done.’

  ‘No, it’s better I see Sid myself. I can’t risk his loose tongue when he’s been at the grog. I’ll run the slop chest on the Hornet next weekend. Want to come?’

  ‘Can’t leave Dorothea. I can’t trust the stupid girl not to elope.’

  It was just before dusk on Monday evening when she came back from the schooner. Maisie walked along the shell-grit path that snaked through the garden and paused to watch the sun sink; a ball of orange-red fire that brought her husband uncomfortably to mind. Maitland in a rage, she thought grimly. The air was shrill with sounds from the bush; chirping cicadas giving up for the night, the frogs that started croaking at the same time each evening, and the mosquitos that whined non-stop in her ears. There were no background sounds at sea, only the gentle slap of waves on wood. She stopped at the foot of the verandah steps, waiting out the moment before she went in and became someone else.

  A movement through the lattice caught her eye. Maitland lay in bed in the mosquito room, the habitual glass of whisky snug in his palm. It was that time of day. She’d sent for the English doctor on Friday morning and she half-expected Maitland to be better by now. He had someone with him, but she couldn’t tell who it was from the bend of his back or the spread of fabric across his shoulders. Maitland was smiling but it didn’t mask the gauntness of his face; he had lost weight, was diminished somehow. She watched him roll over onto his side and retch. She stepped out of sight behind a bush, seen only by a passing bird that was dipping and swooping high and low, chasing the fading sunlight.

  Maitland’s glass crashed to the floor, the noise making her start. She eased forward to get a better look. He lay still, his face a pale blur, shiny with sweat. Had he not been so ill, she would have found his appearance faintly ludicrous. His striped silk bed jacket gave him the look of an expensive deckchair. She stood motionless in the charcoal twilight, watching the tableau.

  Maitland’s visitor stood up from his chair and stretched stiffly. He pushed fever-matted hair from the sick man’s temples and sat on the bed. Then he began to unbutton Maitland’s pyjama jacket and run his fingers over his chest.

  Maitland groaned out loud. ‘What’s happening to me?’

  ‘Shush, Mait.’

  Maisie could see the visitor clearly now, the harsh angles of his medieval face unusually soft, hands continuing their gentle stroking southwards, down the curve of her husband’s neck, the slope of his shoulder, past his navel.

  Maitland stretched out, suspended in a sort of trance, his eyes half-closed, lips open. The man kissed his eyelids, licking the moisture from swe
aty flesh in slow, deliberate circles. Round and round, caressing, soothing with his touch. One hand slipped inside the band of the silky trousers to continue its work, the other tightened its grip on the bedpost, tendons quivering as he kept his weight off the sick man.

  Maisie saw the haze in her husband’s eyes, heard his breath puffing softly between his parted lips and then the cadence changed. His breath came in short ragged bursts, faster and faster like a wheezing racehorse. Faster, faster, panting, gasping, and then he began to shake; a terrible shaking that convulsed his entire body.

  As he finally reached his climax, Maitland shouted out the name of his lover, lost in his own rapture. She had heard him call it out the night of her wedding, but not from her bed: it hadn’t registered then.

  Blair.

  CHAPTER 20

  IN THE PACKING SHED, Maisie sat on Maitland’s chair and swivelled towards the lighthouse. She stared at it, hardly blinking. She knew so little about homosexuality. It was against the Church and the law in England, and it was punishable with prison. That was the sum of all she knew. Her father had been involved in the trial and appeal of a homosexual writer and said that same-sex love created practised liars of the poor devils. She shook her head. After their afternoon tea at Maisie’s house, Jane had loaned her a copy of The Bostonians, encouraging her to read Henry James’ tale of the romantic friendship between two women. It occurred to her that while Jane might have been offering more than platonic friendship, she hadn’t lied to conceal her feelings.

  Blair and Maitland were married men and they were both practised liars. Maitland had brought her out to Australia to give credence to his lie. More than revulsion or even pity, she felt cheated. Not because her husband preferred a man to her – she had witnessed the look on their faces – but he had never once looked at her in that way. She had seen the coldness behind his eyes when they met. Maitland was in love with Blair Montague and had stolen her chance of finding happiness with someone else. Surely she deserved more? She balled her fists and covered her face with her arms. Tears welled up and slid down her cheeks.