by Roxane Dhand
Maisie snaked her way through the throng and planted herself in front of him. For some moments the captain seemed unsure. His gaze did not leave her face as he patted his inside pocket in search of cigarettes.
‘Has someone offered you a drink, madam?’
‘No. Thank you, I’m fine.’
Moving fractionally to his side without conceding her position, she scanned the room. The McMahons were clustered round a young officer in white uniform, both heads nodding as one at whatever he was saying. Mr Beckingsale, the bank manager, looked miserable, his dumpy wife hanging hotly on his arm, and Shorty Mason was propped at the bar, swigging back something red in a cocktail glass. The bartender polished a section of the counter with a fluffy white cloth and kept his opinions to himself.
The captain touched her arm and Maisie swung back knocking into his drink, slopping some clear liquid on the carpet.
‘I’m so sorry. How clumsy of me.’
‘Are you sure I can’t offer you a drink?’
‘Well, maybe a small one.’ To settle my nerves, she thought.
The captain snapped his fingers and a Malay waiter appeared through the crowd. Maisie took a glass off the tray and nipped at the drink, eyes darting about, a nervous antelope at a waterhole. Gin. Perfect!
‘Are you on board by yourself?’ the captain said.
Maisie patted her hair with her spare hand to conceal her embarrassment. ‘Yes. My husband’s unwell but sent me on his behalf.’
‘I am sorry to hear that.’
‘Do you not recognise me, Captain? I sailed up from Port Fremantle with you some months ago, and you married me in the dining room to Maitland Sinclair?’
The captain nodded at her two or three times as if the movement were stirring his brain into action, then banged his chest with his fist like a gorilla in a zoo.
‘Of course,’ he said. ‘It was quite a party.’
Maisie took a slightly larger glug of gin. ‘And did you make a note of it in the log that you had married us at sea?’
‘Well, we weren’t at sea exactly,’ he said, a little flummoxed.
She laughed and rested her hand lightly on his arm. ‘But I’m sure you recorded it in the log?’
The Beckingsales had formed a line to his side. ‘Probably. Yes, I’m sure I would have recorded the event.’
‘Might you be able to check?’
He appeared slightly vexed and gestured at the bank manager and his wife. ‘I could, yes, but not at this moment. You can see I am entertaining.’
She smiled in apology. ‘My husband has been left some money, Captain. To claim it, he needs his original marriage certificate – but the thing is, we seem to have mislaid it. We have had some modifications done to the bungalow and I tidied all the paper work away and – this is rather embarrassing – because I am so scattered, I can’t find the papers anywhere. We wondered if you might be able to help.’
The captain’s eyes softened. ‘Yes, I could make you a copy of the entry if I can find it, but it wasn’t a legally binding ceremony. Maitland said it would do well enough until the resident magistrate came back after the Wet. It was more of an excuse for a party, I understood. You’d need to ask the RM for a copy of the actual certificate when he performed the civil marriage.’
Maisie drained her glass and laughed, a hollow sound even to her, and patted her hair again. She was careful not to let the words slide into one another. ‘I did tell you I was scattered, Captain! I should have thought of that myself. Oh, and I almost forgot to mention – the main reason I’m here is that I am meeting Maitland’s mother. Might you know who she is?’
‘Well, that’s easy. Mrs Sinclair’s standing right behind you,’ he said.
She spun round and, feeling herself redden, dashed a hand across her cheek. ‘Mrs Sinclair?’
Maitland’s mother was tall and elegant in her cream-coloured dress, her eyes the same grey as his, but hers were lively, intelligent and warm. ‘Please, call me Pammie. Is everything all right? You look a mite rattled.’
Maisie put her hands to her face and yet she could do nothing to stop the heat creeping across her cheeks. She held out a hesitant hand and suggested a drink at the bar.
‘How about if we go back to your house so I can catch up with Maitland? It’s why I’ve come, after all. And to meet you, of course.’
Maisie put down her glass. ‘Whatever am I thinking? You must be longing to change your clothes and see your son. He is not very well at the moment, but the doctor assures us he’ll soon be on the mend.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ Pammie said. ‘Have you informed him that I am coming?’
‘No, I haven’t.’ Maisie turned towards the double doors. ‘I wanted it to be a surprise.’
Maisie led her mother-in-law into Maitland’s room and stood guard beside the bedhead. She mimed drinking a cup of tea, but Pammie shook her head. Maisie dropped her hands, hot fingers dangling at the end of leaden arms, then turned to the man in the bed and shook his shoulder.
‘Look who’s here, Maitland!’ Maisie said, her voice unnaturally bright.
Maitland rolled his feverish eyes towards the door.
‘It’s me, Maitland. Your mother.’ Pammie moved over to the bed and sat down.
Maitland shifted his legs away from the edge and clutched at the sheet. His face was grey, skin flushed with fever, eyes dim and weak, but recognition was written there in stark cold letters. ‘What’re you doing here? Come to crow?’
Pammie took a cigarette and box of matches out of her bag and reached over to the bedside table for the ashtray. She lit up and puffed smoke into the air. Very calmly, as if she were settling down to read her son a bedtime story, she said, ‘I’ve often wondered how you’ve fared since you fled without a word, my entire savings in your short pockets.’
Maitland flinched. ‘It wasn’t me.’
‘Well,’ she said through the thick purple-grey smoke, ‘I don’t know who else it could have been.’ She got up from the bed and went over to the dressing table. For a tall woman, she walked in small strides – her bottom firmly restrained by a wonder of structural engineering – and picked up a hairbrush. She rubbed the silver back with her thumb. ‘I see you have the dressing-table set your father had sent over from England. Funny, isn’t it, how it disappeared from the house at the same time you did. Maybe the thief sent it to you to dilute his guilty conscience.’
The spite in Maitland’s eyes flattened. ‘I didn’t ask you to come. I don’t want you here. Bloody go away.’
‘I want some answers after all this time.’ Pammie replaced the brush on the table. ‘Such as how exactly your father died.’
Maitland thrashed his legs about under the covers, threw out his arm and swept the water jug off the table.
Pammie came back to the bed and stubbed out her cigarette. ‘You are too old for tantrums, Maitland. Sleep if you must, but do mind that we’ll return to this discussion in the morning, once you are rested and have a handle on your temper.’
She left the room, remaining as tall and straight as when she entered. Maisie was two steps behind, doing her very best not to slouch.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said through her teeth. ‘He’s not well and in a great deal of pain.’
‘Maitland should have told me he was married.’
‘He probably thought I was irrelevant.’
Pammie Sinclair stopped and turned, eying her with suspicion. ‘Oh?’
Maisie immediately regretted her indiscretion, and said quickly, ‘All the men here lead a clubby sort of life. Wives are expected to fit in round them. It’s a different life to what I was expecting, and I’m not sure I’m built for the heat. I sometimes think …’ She broke off, not certain how to complete her sentence.
Pammie inclined her head towards her son’s bedroom. ‘Maitland’s father, Paul, was like that too. He didn’t want the responsibility of a wife but socially he thought he ought to have one. Now, do you know what I think?’
‘
What might that be?’
‘You should show me to my room and let me change for dinner.’
The two women sat in the near-dark, side by side on a cane-backed sofa, and spoke softly. Maitland, asleep in his room, was not necessary to their conversation but he was their common ground.
‘When did you last hear from Maitland, Mrs Sinclair?’
‘Pammie, please!’ She offered Maisie a stern frown that held no harshness. ‘Twenty years ago, in my estimates. He’d been working the opal fields at West Cliffs with Paul, who would have been your grandmother’s cousin. Paul kept in vague touch, but I never heard a thing from my son. I’d packed them both off there after Maitland finished school – he was probably livid with me.’
‘I understood that he hadn’t actually finished at the Catholic school.’
‘You’d be right. I don’t suppose he told you the details.’
Pammie got up and went over to the drinks table. She poured herself a large slug of scotch and turned back to her daughter-in-law. She settled herself against the cushions and got down to business. ‘What were you discussing with the captain, Maisie, earlier on? When we met on the ship?’
Maisie recounted the story while Pammie sipped at her drink, back ramrod-straight. She could almost have dusted the ceiling with her hair. There were no exclamations of surprise, no frowns, no slouch of the spine, no censure. Maisie’s own mother would not have approved of the corset lady, she thought.
‘Let me be sure I have got this correct,’ Pammie said. ‘Maitland wrote to your parents at the end of last year and, on the strength of that letter, you were sent away to marry my son. Your uncle has now passed away and left you his money, but in order to claim it, your uncle stipulated that your husband, whoever he might be, must prove that he legally married you. That, to me, sounds like your uncle had his head screwed on and was looking out for your best interests, Maisie. The captain told you this evening that the ceremony he conducted on board was a piece of theatre and that you should have had the wedding ratified in the courthouse by the resident magistrate. Only, Maitland never bothered to legalise the arrangement. Is that about it?’
It was not hard to see why Pamela Sinclair had got on in business.
‘Yes,’ Maisie said. ‘But I think there is a little more to it than that.’
‘Oh?’
Somewhere in the bungalow, floorboards creaked.
Pammie frowned. ‘Is anyone else here, besides us?’
‘Just Marjorie and Duc.’
Pammie edged a little closer. ‘Go on with what you were saying.’
‘A while back I came across a letter my mother had written to Maitland. It wasn’t addressed to me and I’m not proud to say that I opened it – but I did, mostly because I hadn’t heard a word from my parents since I arrived in Australia. I learned that Maitland had been intercepting our correspondence, so they had not heard from me either, even though I was writing each week. My mother suggested that he was in some sort of arrangement with my parents and made a bizarre comment about my brother, who I always understood to have died as a baby.’
‘What did she say exactly?’
Maisie closed her eyes and pictured the words. ‘You will inform me of what happened to my son sixteen years ago, with the details corroborated by a third party.’
Pammie ran a finger round the rim of her glass. ‘I will ask Maitland about that in the morning, and if there is anything to uncover, rest assured I’ll winkle it out of him. What I find most puzzling is that your parents sent you here to him – a second cousin your mother barely knew and had never met. I’m not even sure Maitland was aware of your existence. Paul would have known, of course. He came to Australia nearly forty years ago and that’s when he and I met. Your mother must have run into him in England, though.’
Maisie chewed her lip. ‘Why did he come out to Australia in the first place?’
‘Paul had a string of debts in England but he was a great charmer. He took me in at the start, led me to believe that he was wealthy and well connected – and, stupid young girl that I was, I fell for it. Give him his due, though, he always had a great belief that his ship would come in and that he would make enough money to send Maitland back home to meet his grandparents. His son was his greatest achievement. Paul adored him and was wholly convinced that all would be forgiven, because he had produced another male Sinclair.’
Maisie wondered about absolution and was not certain it was a given. ‘And did they forgive him, eventually?’
‘It’s hard to know. Paul did go back to England for a spell when his father died, but he left Maitland here.’
‘When was that?’
‘Years back. Fifteen or sixteen years. Something of that order. Although Paul and I were estranged, he did write to me before he went. He was good like that.’
Pammie looked Maisie up and down and pulled her chair nearer. She leaned forward and clasped the girl’s hands. ‘Your mother must have had very good reason to send her only child away. It’s not a natural thing to do.’
‘You did.’
‘Yes, I did. But he was never on his own – he had his father with him. I sent him away to get him out of Melbourne. Maitland didn’t leave school in the usual way after final examinations and so on; he was asked to leave and it devastated him. The Catholic Church was his life, you see. He adored all the prayers and singing, the music, the bells and the –’ Pammie searched for her words. ‘Sense of order that his faith gave him. He was always ambitious – in a good manner – and wanted to work his way into a position of trust and authority within the Church. It was both his dream and career plan.’
Maisie knew that the craving for acceptance had not lessened any. ‘What happened?’
‘Maitland was taken on as an altar boy at our church. Do you understand what that is?’
‘I don’t know anything about Catholicism.’
Pammie sat back in her chair and crossed her ankles. ‘Along with two other boys, he assisted the priest at liturgy and also helped him prepare for it. There were a great deal of things to do, such as filling the pitcher for the washing of hands, replacing the charcoal in the censer, putting out the cups for the wine and cutting bread for communion. The three boys naturally spent a good deal of time alone with the priest. He was instructing them in Bible studies. They adored him, those boys, and Father Patrick loved them. He’d take them back to the presbytery – his home – for afternoon tea after Bible study, which they considered a huge honour. We all did. One Sunday afternoon, though, some desperate soul needed his confession heard and pushed his way into the presbytery. He caught the priest with his trousers down.’
Maisie had to ask. ‘Was he with Maitland?’
‘Not on that particular occasion, but he had been.’
The wind howled round the house and banged a door, snapping off the conversation. A moment passed before Maisie could think what to say. She lifted her drink to her lips and raised her other hand to the glass to steady it. ‘How old was he?’
‘Young. Fifteen or sixteen. I was appalled, although his father wasn’t especially shocked. He himself jumped both ways – it was common in the privileged English country-house circuit he moved in, before his parents packed him off to Australia. But in a small community, folk are not so accepting, nor do they forget or forgive. Father Patrick received a weak slap on the wrist from Rome and was given a few hundred Hail Marys as his punishment. He was moved up north and told to ignore his unnatural urges, and the boys were expelled from school. Maitland was destroyed, utterly heartbroken that his hopes of entering the priesthood were in tatters. Paul took him off to the opal fields after that to get him away.’
Maisie shook her head, trying to imagine Maitland with a broken heart. ‘I had no idea. He’s never shared any of this with me.’
‘Even his love of religion?’ Pammie said.
‘He never goes to church.’
Pammie drew herself up even straighter. ‘No?’
Maisie looked away in the dire
ction of Maitland’s bedroom and squeezed her lips together, feeling suddenly close to tears. ‘No. I would say that turning his back on his faith has given him licence to do exactly what he wants without accountability to anyone. His behaviour is despicable and he tells so many lies it would need a very robust priest to act as his confessor. There’s no-one in the Bay who remotely wants to take him on and now I find myself responsible for a very sick man who is not my husband, and I’m finding that a bit hard to deal with.’
Pammie placed her glass gently on the table. ‘What has changed by you finding this out, Maisie? You say that everyone thinks Maitland is your husband, so continue with that deception. No-one is going to know any different.’
Maisie patted her sleeve to locate her handkerchief. ‘If it ever comes out that I have been living with a man out of wedlock, no decent man is ever going to want me.’
‘No-one knows the truth of your situation, and if the worst happens and Maitland were to die, you can present yourself as a grieving widow.’
Maisie blew her nose, unconvinced. ‘Blair Montague knows the truth of what’s going on here. He’s complicit in everything Maitland does and is bound to know our wedding was a sham. He probably even suggested it in the first place, and I know it would give him great delight to see me publicly pilloried.’
‘Blair Montague is here?’
‘He’s the mayor.’
Pammie was very still. The light from the lighthouse flitted across her face, a tangle of memories illuminated in her eyes. She swallowed the last of her drink and stubbed out her cigarette.
‘Maitland always believed that Blair was the one who discovered Father Patrick with the boy. It makes no sense at all that they should be here together.’
‘Unless, of course, Blair was jealous,’ Maisie said, ‘and blew the whistle on purpose.’
Later that evening, when Pammie had turned in, Maisie called an emergency meeting in the kitchen.
Duc was setting the bread for morning while getting his vocal chords around a new tune he had picked up in Asia Place.