Captive Wife, The

by Kidman, Fiona

  Mrs Guard states that when the New Zealanders first took her prisoner she was nearly exhausted with the loss of blood, which was flowing from the wounds she received in her head with their tomahawks. They voraciously licked the blood, and, when it ceased to flow, attempted to make an incision in her throat for that purpose, with part of an iron hoop. They then stripped her and her children naked, dragged her to their huts, and would have killed her, had not a chief’s wife kindly interfered in her behalf, and when the bludgeon was raised with that intention, threw a rug over her person and saved her life. The savages took the two children from under her arms and threw them onto the ground; and while they were dividing the property they had stolen from the crew of the Harriet, kept running backwards and forwards over the children as they lay upon the ground — one of which, the youngest still retains the marks of this brutal operation. They afterwards delivered the youngest child to the mother, and took the other one away into the bush, and Mrs Guard did not see it for some months after

  Account of Betty Guard as reported to the

  Sydney Morning Herald, November 1834.

  So, it is another day for scandal on the streets, broad and narrow, of Sydney Town. Three weeks have passed since the story of Betty Guard was first aired in the press. I am the talk of the town. Crowds queue for the newspapers in order to get another instalment of the details, something to mull over dinner parties at Government House and between dances at Mrs Manning’s balls, and cause a stir here at the Rocks, where ticket of leave men and women huddle in their cottages on the brown sandstone that edges the shoreline. When I walk down the street, a way opens up for me to pass through, as if I were not of them any more, but rather, as if my deep and dark past puts me in a class all of my own. Down here among yesterday’s canaries, who have done all manner of things, you would think I was the devil.

  Look, I might say, I am innocent. I am just a woman unclothed by savages. What would you have done? Don’t you understand? I am a heroine. All the newspapers will tell you that.

  I might say, my Granny and Granddad were on the First Fleet and who do you think you are when you’re at home.

  Instead I say nothing. I keep walking, not looking to the left nor to the right.

  Last week a skit was performed at the Theatre Royale, a prelude to the main play, featuring a pale maiden with fair tousled ringlets falling this way and that as she leans back, her head almost touching the stage. A bottle of red ink drips over her snow-white tunic, and an actor smeared head to toe with coal dust and only a loincloth to cover his manly parts, swoons upon her throat. A bearded sailor wrings his hands in anguish in the wings. Cock-a-doodle-do, squawks a dancer clad in a swirling ostrich-feather cloak, flapping his arms as if he were a rooster. He dances on tiptoes across the reclining pair, holding his arms outstretched. ‘Thereby hangs a tail,’ the rooster cackles, and the lights dim to thunderous applause.

  It lasted only a night or so, for there are those who protest my virtue and are incensed on my account; it has been said that even the Governor stepped in to have it stopped. Two nights or three, it was long enough for men from Cambridge Street to take themselves up town for a look and so it is known about, word for word, around this way. My husband Jacky Guard stayed home. But of course he has heard about it. Even if he speaks to no one, my aunt Charlotte Pugh speaks to everyone.

  I do not have fair ringlets anyway. I am tall and dark, handsome some say, though my Aunt Charlotte thinks I have a strong chin for a woman. It is your eyes, she would say, back in the days when she was not displeased with me; they are scorching eyes that men might die for. When I was a girl she would twine my hair round the stems of clay pipes after a wash, so that it came out curly, but now it falls in waves down my back when it is free. People watch me for signs and messages I will not give them.

  All the same, I’ve been in no mood to go out upon the town, for at the Rocks it is possible to bear the curious stares, the hushed voices. These are my own people and soon something else will come up to take their interest. Someone will come along with a circus. Last year there was a Bengal tiger in a cage. Or somebody will drop dead with drink.

  Up in town, though, along George Street where the smart people stroll, it will be another matter. They will want to prod and poke, in a manner of speaking, and make excuses to hold a conversation. These are the same people who will spend a shilling to watch the Aboriginals fight. The fights are supposed to be banned but who can resist the spectacle of one black man on another, tearing each other to pieces. It’s cheaper than the circus.

  But neither can I stay in, day after day, because Jacky will not speak with me. He has a dark and brooding stare that he keeps corked up in the corner of the room near the hearth where my aunt, Charlotte Pugh, prepares our dinner. I would help her but she will not let me. As if I am an interfering guest. The heat is rising outside, soon it might rise to ninety-five in the shade, but still he sits near the flames, and I am afraid of him. He has an old water-stained book in his hands that he turns over and over. It was his father’s book and his father’s before that. This book is not the Bible, it is worse than that. I need to get away from Jacky and the book, and whatever it is telling him he must do, for that is something I do not know, what lies between its covers.

  Besides, it will be Christmas soon and I have decided that John and Louisa will have presents this year, even though we have fallen on hard times. They have spent a winter in the bush among the Maoris, and now that is all behind us, and we are here in Sydney, safe and sound, and I am a mother who does the best she can. I would like to remind my husband of that.

  In the room next door, Louisa begins to cry again, the forlorn wail of a child who cannot be comforted. My mother will soon be here, I tell Charlotte. She is coming and she will care for Louisa. Charlotte looks at me with a dislike that makes me want to weep. Charlotte was always well disposed towards me; she took me in when my mother went off with Deaves the sawyer, and my grandmother had died. It was Charlotte who rescued me, gave me a roof over my head. Without her, I might never have met up with Jacky again, never gone off to New Zealand, never been shipwrecked.

  Never? I say that as if I wouldn’t have missed the experience. Perhaps that is so. But what does it matter, when everyone has their own salt to put on the meat.

  I have dressed modestly today in a dress of grey linen. I wear no jewellery. My bonnet is without feathers and the light scarf I wrap around my neck is plain wool, even though the day is warm. For that is where their eyes slide, those of the people who stare at me, straight to the base of my throat, to see the wounds of which I have complained, and which the newspaper has taken up with such enthusiasm, the spot where they tried to open my vein and drink my blood.

  It was only a little cut, I might say, all healed over, and no teeth marks at all. Their thirst went unquenched. Oh, so much that I might say. Even if I did, they would want to see.

  I won’t be long, I tell Charlotte. Already I hear my mother’s approaching footsteps, heralded by the chattering of young John, who has become a handful since he lived among the Maoris. They told him he would be a chief and let him run wild, and now he won’t do anything I tell him. I don’t want to see my mother, I have little to thank her for, but she’s about all I have at the moment.

  Goodbye, Jacky, I say. I’m going no further than George Street, I’ll look up the old shop and see what treats I can find for the little ones, I’m sure they’ll let me have a little favour or two up there, you know how kind they were.

  He doesn’t speak a word. I take the back door so I won’t have to walk past him, out through the gate that leads across the ditch, where sewers drain. In town they have men who come with their buckets when the lights are out and nobody can see.

  So I make my escape, heading towards George Street where I hope to find my employers of some years back, when I was still a girl, not taken, though I was promised. Their names are Mister Spyer and Mister Cohen, two Jewish gentlemen dealers who came from England free men, not
convicts like my grandparents, and my father and my stepfather, and my husband — not men in chains, just fortune seekers. I was their maid of all works who measured out rum for sailors, kept brass things shiny and dresses sorted. I loved the feel of silk and satin running through my fingers when I lifted bolts of material. I held them to my face and breathed in their faint spicy smell, ran my fingers over the rich brocades.

  Along the lower end of George Street are to be found open markets filled with bustle and noise and colour. Parrots and cockatoos swing in cages before the doors of shops crowded with sailors jingling Spanish dollars they have earned at sea. Down the left-hand side are stalls where maize and wheat are sold; on the right, green vegetables, turkeys, ducks, geese and sucking pigs. I compare the best prices, in order to buy something to put Charlotte in a better mood on my way back. A shilling for a basket of peaches and nicely ripened cheese at fourpence a pound, which I can afford, just so long as I don’t have to touch the peaches, for I am like my grandmother in this respect: I cannot bear the feel of a peach, which puts my teeth on edge, or worse, feels like my fingernails are bending back on themselves. I would like to linger over the booths of drapery for, as you’ll have gathered, I’m partial to quality and, from the beginning, Jacky has spared nothing on me. All that is changed now; he has neither the mood nor the money to indulge me, for all our ships are lost at sea. In spite of myself, my eyes roam over hoop petticoats and some fine lawn camisoles; it’s hard to explain but it’s as if I’m looking down into the lives of women and girls who are like the person I was once, and cannot be again.

  I hurry on, not looking left or right now, past a myriad creaking signs over the inns — the Crooked Billet, Three Jolly Sailors, Rose of Australia and World Turn’d Upside Down. Well, that last one would do me, though it was meant for sailors who believe that when they put to sea and sail over the horizon they are hanging on by their toes to the opposite side of the world. Though how it works I can’t tell either, for all the world round here looks flat to me — you couldn’t get flatter than Australia. But out on the ocean with Jacky, I’ve seen the way the sky curls over on itself, and I’ve worked out that there is some solution to the riddle of the world and how you get from one side of it to another without falling off.

  I find myself glancing over my shoulder, as if I am being followed by something or someone, a shadow as large as a whale on the horizon, and I know that though he is not there — or, at least, I don’t think he is following me — that it is the shadow of my husband.

  When I reach the shop, I see it has fallen on hard times. The grog barrels drip into their saucers as ever, but there is not much else but a collection of dusty pewter mugs on a shelf, some cheap fabric stacked any old how, and a few odds and ends collected in tubs. The tobacco is tenpence a pound, which is daylight robbery, and available much cheaper at the port. Gone are the hats and hat boxes, which were almost as pretty as the hats themselves, not to mention the gentlemen’s hats with stovepipe crowns and ribbon round the brims, and fine kid gloves, and gold watches in locked glass cabinets, and a range of the best china money can buy. Once, when I was over from New Zealand, I bought a beautiful meat dish here, pale green and white, my favourite colours. My Granny said people who prefer green are cold by nature but that I do not believe, though she was right about most things. The centrepiece has pattern of thistles and roses and shamrocks, not that I have seen a shamrock. The platter has channels down the sides so the meat juices run down to a hollow; I pour them off to make the gravy. Well, I never expect to see that again. Ngai Tahu tribesmen have burnt down our house again, that I do know. Not for the first time, over these past months, I have thought that Jacky may not have chosen his friends wisely. Te Rauparaha and his Ngati Toa warriors served him well at first, but we have been in the middle of a war between the tribes of the north and south for years now. Not so bad when Te Rauparaha was on the winning side, but the tides have turned against him, and we are the enemy of those at war with him. I cannot say I blame them, that they do not like us.

  As for whether we will ever return, I have no way of knowing. For I’m not sure that I mean aught to Jacky now. I don’t care for the way his eyes follow me around the room at nights when I’m turning back the covers on the bed. I am filled with sorrow when he turns away once I’m in the bed, and goes back to the kitchen. I hear him and my aunt Charlotte Pugh talking in low voices. I wonder sometimes, will I get out of this alive. But perhaps it’s just that I got into the habit of thinking like this when I was in captivity. I’ve seen Jacky in a mood before, and he has got over it. But never as black as this. I tell myself that Jacky came back for me, to the wild Taranaki coast, to rescue me away from Oaoiti, the chief who held me as his own. And that he will recover from all of this. If he would listen to me, I would say, forget about it. Forgetting is everything, and all we have.

  But I don’t know how much I will forget. Or what I will remember.

  You do what you must.

  ‘Well, ma’am, I didn’t expect to see you here,’ says Mr Spyer in his timid little chirp. He sits behind the counter, his curly black hair trying to make its escape from beneath his skull cap. I always found him the friendlier of the partners, though an anxious man. Mr Cohen was more on the make, eager to please the administrators and military people. More than once, I wondered if he did not like the people of the Rocks shopping in his store, as if they gave off a bad odour that might affect his more elegant clientele. One thing for us to work for him, another to serve us. Many are surprised that convicts and their families have money in their purses. There is work for all who want it, and sealers and whalers bring money into the port that those on military rations can only dream about, for all their airs and graces, especially now their rackets on the poor have been stopped. Not that I will be buying much today, and Mr Spyer senses that as soon as he sets eyes on me.

  He shakes his head in a mournful way, knowing I’ve come down in the world. Of course he reads the newspapers. He offers his regrets for all that has befallen me, and speaks of his relief that I and my children at least, at least, dear Mrs Guard, have been spared. All the same, he is holding back.

  I tell him what I have come for: perhaps a marked down toy for John, a doll of some kind or another, or perhaps a little bracelet for Louisa, who won’t know whether it’s Christmas or not. It is not just her age I’m thinking about, for some days she looks so pale and weak I wonder if I’ll ever get the roses back in her cheeks. She was a bonny girl, gaining weight, before we were stranded on a rocky shore. A girl of my own is what I always wanted, and I might as well be dead as lose her, yet I saw her treated rough and trampled on, and that is not an easy thing for a mother to get over.

  Mr Spyer shakes his head again, a refusal in his eyes.

  ‘What is the matter?’ I ask. ‘Are you afraid Mr Cohen will catch you giving discounts?’

  ‘It is not that,’ he mutters, and I swear that he blushes. Then I know what it is: I am an embarrassment to him. And yet his eyes hold their old sympathetic kindness which has always drawn me to him. ‘People are saying how remarkably brave you are.’

  ‘It is Mr Cohen, isn’t it?’ I ask. For there was a man who wanted to go up in the world. And too serious for his own good.

  When he doesn’t answer, I remind him with as much dignity as I can muster, of the times he has helped out poor souls down on their luck, which at the moment I certainly am, but the words die in my throat. ‘It is not as if I am asking for money,’ I say.

  He gives me a quizzical look.

  I lower my eyes and slip from my finger the ring that Jacky Guard gave me when I left Australia that first time. It has not left me, not even when I lived in the bush.

  Of course, the toys were an excuse. I did want them, but I want money even more.

  Mr Spyer looks long and hard at the ring.

  ‘I can lend you a little,’ he says, ‘but I do not want the ring.’ He reaches into the drawer where he keep the money and extracts five pounds.

/>   ‘You must take the ring,’ I say, and my eyes are hot with tears and wounded pride.

  ‘No,’ he says. ‘That will do you no good at all, to be seen around Sydney without your ring. What would your husband say? Now, please choose a toy or two for the little ones.’

  ‘I’ll pay you back,’ I say. I am in two minds as to whether to leave there and then. But I hear a rustle of taffeta behind me and a woman comes towards me, a puzzled frown on her face. She is a woman close to fifty.

  ‘Why, it’s Betsy Deaves,’ the woman says.

  Nobody has called me that since I worked here at Spyer and Cohen’s, for that is what I was known in those days. Momentarily, I think she must be one of the customers, but there is something more familiar than that about her, and then it comes back to me. My teacher at the Ragged School.

  Before I can say her name, Mr Spyer says, too heartily, ‘Well, yes, fancy you remembering our Betsy, Miss Malcolm.’ He has snatched a wooden horse with wheels out of a tub, a cheap pull-along toy, and thrusts it into my hands. ‘From me, Betsy.’

  I take the toy, for I would be cutting off my nose to spite my face if I were to turn it down, and place it in my bag. All the while, I consider the woman before me. She looks in better shape than when I last saw her, her portly thighs well strapped in. Her skin is clear and rosy, even if folded a little round the chin. And her hair, which I used to think the colour of mouse fur, straggling out of its bun, is caught up now and coiled around her head in a fashionable way. Altogether, she looks like a woman who pays attention to her looks.

  ‘Thank you so much,’ I say, endeavouring to recover my wits, ‘but most people call me Mrs Guard these days.’

  Miss Malcolm’s hand flies to her mouth. ‘Oh my goodness Betsy, you are not her, not the Mrs Guard?’

  I inform my old teacher that I am indeed Mrs Guard.