The Secret Fate of Mary Watson

by Judy Johnson

  He hasn’t moved.

  Charley and I walk towards the house together. I pull the sling of my apron tighter around the corn and cabbage.

  ‘Charley, what do you think of Ah Leung?’ I tilt my head backwards towards the farm.

  ‘Him sour bloke. I like other one more better.’

  ‘I like Ah Sam better too.’ I think of something else I’ve been meaning to ask our black boys. ‘Are you worried about the mainland natives coming over in their canoes?’

  This hits a rawer nerve. ‘They spear Darby and me.’

  ‘Not just you two, probably. We’ll just have to make sure that they don’t come too close.’

  He doesn’t look reassured. We reach the beach, and he points southwest. ‘Wild black that way. Not far.’

  It looks like he’s pointing to the southern tip of Lizard Island. Or something beyond it.

  ‘Now?’

  Charley nods.

  ‘But Bob said there’s no blacks on the island.’

  He doesn’t want to contradict the boss, but his mouth is set.

  ‘What do they want, do you know? Why do they come to the Lizard?’

  But he either doesn’t understand me, or won’t say.

  34

  All men in the far north carry a knife.

  The trick is knowing how to use it.

  From the secret diary of Mary Watson

  3RD JULY 1880

  An afternoon in Gehenna. Stripped, hacked and portioned. A hot red smell in my nose. Grease under my fingernails.

  The blade flashes in Porter’s hand as he bends over the dead goat, holding one of its horns. He flenses the skin from the body in economical tearing motions, aided by the wedge of the knife, until there is just a ribbed bag of shadowy organs, rivers of crimson veins just under the surface.

  The intestines stream into the dirt when he runs the blade up from pelvis to rib, the muscle in his thin arm flexing like a ball squeezed then released. The black boys know the routine in a way that I don’t. They run to grab as much as they can of the slippery mess and then stand back waiting for the rest.

  Porter turns the carcass over, makes an incision to expose the kidneys, cuts the ties that hold them like coin purses to a belt, then flicks them towards Charley and Darby. I step back to avoid a splash of blood, and hold my nose.

  ‘Thanks, boss.’ Charley’s still expectant.

  ‘Shoo now,’ Porter says.

  The boys move to a spot three feet away and look hungry there, instead.

  The Kanakas have slipped silently into the background.

  Porter glances up at me, his forehead shining. His fingers are dripping. There’s a strange, almost indifferent lust in his eyes.

  ‘You have to give them all some,’ he tells me. ‘It’s good policy to keep the workers happy.’

  I motion with my head to the Islander men. They move closer. Porter portions the meat and I hand out the pieces, each with its garnish of flies. Charley leers at the collapsed purple pouches of lungs in the cavity.

  ‘All right, take them, you little guts,’ Porter says with a grin, deftly cutting the organs free and tossing them over. ‘One day I swear you’ll eat so much you’ll explode.’

  Back in the cookhouse, Ah Sam and I begin our preparations. Even in winter, fresh meat won’t last longer than two days. From under the tub, he drags out a small tin safe with a flyproof insert of wire netting. We work as a team. I cut slits into the surface of each portion. He massages salt thickly into each cut, then places the pieces on a wooden slatted rack. He sets a dish beneath it so the brine can drain away.

  ‘What now?’ I ask, washing my hands in a few inches of brackish water.

  He points to the salt pig. ‘Tomorrow more salt.’ He straightens up. Presses a fist into the base of his spine. ‘Next day, more salt. Three days altogether. Then store in tub.’

  He helps me chop up some of the fresh meat that’s left for stew. The corn and cabbage I collected from Ah Leung go into the pot. Soon, a savoury steam rises up. Ah Sam asks if I want potato. I tell him the ones in the house have sprouted and are green all the way through when cut. I’ll give them back to Ah Leung for planting.

  ‘Just boil some more water for rice,’ I say.

  He raises an eyebrow, but obeys.

  I wonder what’s so controversial about rice. It’s not long before I find out.

  The sun’s gone down, bloody as the goat. It’s dinnertime. Bob greets his plate of food with a scowl and that old argumentative glint in his tight eye. He pokes the rice with his fork.

  ‘I’m not going to eat that muck. I’ve not sunk so low.’

  Porter’s watchful, his eyes moving from Bob to me. He forks in a mouthful of stew and chews slowly. Percy looks up with a spark in his gaze, as though sensing the night’s entertainment’s about to unfold.

  I count to ten in my head, then another ten.

  I listen to the bristles of wind outside, painting the sky in wide brush strokes. I try to conjure up some oriental calm.

  ‘The potatoes are green,’ I say. ‘And rice is the only dry food the insects leave alone. Would you rather have a mouthful of creepy-crawlies?’

  Bob raises the eyebrow on the sinister side of his face. ‘Aye.’ He takes a swallow of rum from his pannikin. ‘So long as they’re not Chinese creepy-crawlies.’

  ‘You could always cook your own dinner, Watson,’ Percy says pleasantly.

  ‘And ye could mind the shit coming out of yer gob.’

  A knot in my stomach tightens. Porter puts a hand on Bob’s arm. Bob shakes him off.

  Carrie’s already put down her fork, her eyes small, like a wary animal’s.

  Percy takes a mouthful of rice, exaggerates his pleasure in its chewing. ‘Delicious, Mary. I always think rice adds an indefinable something to any meal.’

  And then the whole sorry carnival cranks up its routine.

  ‘Come outside and fight like a man. Or don’t ye have the mettle to back up the mouth.’

  ‘I’m a lover, not a fighter, Watson. Unlike you with those trollops at Charley’s.’

  Bob lunges over the table. Plates, food and cups go flying. Percy lands a punch.

  I’ve had enough. I upend the table and, while I’m at it, kick over the scraps bucket. Drag my arm along one of the shelves so that fishing gear, bottles of buttons, canisters of food go flying. I doubt they even notice.

  ‘Kill each other. See if I care. I’m not staying around to watch this. Come on, Carrie.’

  The door bangs against its frame. I have no firm plan but to head for the moon in the distance. I can hear Porter calling my name from the doorway, but I don’t turn. Behind us, there are fading expletives and the fleshy whack of knuckles.

  ‘Where are we going?’ Carrie asks. ‘I’m cold. I haven’t got my shawl.’

  I slow down enough for her to catch up and put my arm around her. ‘We’ll sit on the beach for a while until they cool off.’

  ‘But it’s so dark. It’s not safe.’

  The molten-rush to my head has subsided. The moon’s a great, new-minted sovereign in the black silk money-bag of the sky. Its light is eerie, a cold, colourless pall, but it does make everything from here to the swamp visible.

  ‘Nothing can sneak up on us,’ I say.

  We sit on the sand with our skirts folded beneath us. The ocean whispers. That same moon that can seem so anaemic and out of place on land is in its element over the water: a silver gown laid over a rumpled bed.

  ‘I’m sorry, Carrie. It’s a rough life for a young girl.’

  ‘You’re a young girl too,’ she says.

  I turn to see a deep-yellow light bobbing towards us from the direction of the house. It could be any of the men. I watch, but don’t stand.

  Porter’s face, underlit by the lantern, looks old, sagging over its support of bones.

  ‘Are you coming back?’ he asks.

  Neither of us moves, so he sits down next to Carrie and stares out to sea. White foam creeps up the d
amp sand, then leaves ribbon trails as it retreats over the pock of pipis, the small quiver of gleaming stones.

  ‘Have you noticed how the ocean smells salty blue by day? But at night it’s more a weedy indigo?’ I don’t know why I’ve said it.

  ‘Colours don’t smell.’ He smiles in the dark. ‘But I somehow know what you mean. Are you coming back?’ Again, that patient tone.

  ‘Is the fight over?’

  ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘You mustn’t get upset about those two. They’ve been at each other from the beginning: like bucks sparring.’

  ‘They’re not young bucks and they should know better.’

  ‘Yes, they should.’

  We sit in silence for a bit longer. Carrie rests her head on my shoulder. I absently stroke her hair.

  ‘Have you always been the peacemaker, Porter?’

  He shrugs, a bit tightly, as though I’ve accused him of being boring.

  ‘You’re a kind man. This business, this island … it doesn’t seem the place for you.’

  He hesitates before speaking. ‘Trouble is, I don’t know anything else but slug fishing. And the longer a man does work like this, the more time he spends alone, the more he’s set in his ways. But … it gets pretty lonely after a while.’ He rubs his mouth. ‘I suppose a man, even if he managed to get a girl, wouldn’t quite know how to act.’

  ‘Like Bob?’ Carrie says. I’ve almost forgotten she’s there. ‘He’s not very good with Mary, is he?’

  ‘No, not very.’

  The words are spoken easily enough, but I sense resentment there too. Not fresh, but old. A burned-on crust. What would he envy Bob for? His business? His ability to find a wife? Something that happened a long time ago that I have no knowledge of?

  ‘She doesn’t love him, you know,’ Carrie says. ‘Maybe that’s why Bob is so angry all the time.’

  ‘Carrie. Hush.’

  ‘Tell you that, did she?’ Porter pulls his knees a little closer up to his chest.

  ‘No … I just know.’

  ‘Carrie a romantic,’ I say dryly.

  ‘There are worse things to be.’

  Carrie finishes the conversation off for all of us. ‘It’s only fair, though. Bob doesn’t love her either.’

  By ten o’clock, the two men, at least temporarily, have settled their differences. Carrie’s asleep. Porter and Percy have gone to their huts for the night. It’s just Bob and me. It’s a shock to hear him say in an ordinary voice, ‘Today would have been my poor mother’s birthday.’ He gingerly reaches for what will soon be a black eye.

  I pull a sock over a smooth knucklebone. Pick up a darning needle. ‘Oh?’ I draw the needle through, readjust the material. After half an hour’s cleaning up the mess in the house, I’m not sympathetic.

  He’s sitting in a partial patch of darkness, outside the civilised circle of lantern light. I can hear the wet-fish suck on his pipe, the slow click as the medicinal balls roll into the past. His movements look like shadow puppets on a wall.

  ‘Aye, she was a wonderful mother,’ he says. ‘But addled in the head.’

  I think back to the letter I found in his box: Things would have been different if Mother was a normal woman.

  ‘She killed my father, did ye know?’

  I count a slow six seconds. Listen to the insomniac sea turning over in its bed. Another suck on the pipe. Another brooding silence. The shift of stones close to the house. A lizard?

  The balls rotate a half-click. Bob’s fingers in the dark work away like industrious worms, independent of his mind, or so he thinks. Truth is, I’m starting to read his moods by their rhythm. They tell me now it’s safe to ask a question.

  ‘Killed him? How?’

  ‘Rat poison. She served it up one night on his beef.’

  ‘Did she mistake it for mustard?’

  But he’s not interested in discussing the details. ‘Just so ye know: I’m not addled in the head like her.’

  I bring the cotton thread up to my teeth and bite through it. ‘Of all the things I think you are, Bob, mad is not one of them.’

  It occurs to me I should say something more. He’s holding out an olive branch of sorts. And it does make my life easier when he’s in a reasonable mood.

  ‘You know, I think it might be Australia that leaves the lid off the rat poison.’

  He looks up, head cocked quizzically. ‘What nonsense is that?’

  ‘Well, it’s so big, isn’t it? So empty. So full of that lonely blue light, with dry green beneath it.’ As I speak, I feel a sudden pang for Truro. For everything writ small and delicate. The peach-pink hollyhocks that line the lanes, turning their faces like rapturous parishioners towards the church on the hill. ‘It’s a wonder more of us don’t lose our minds.’

  He looks at me flatly. ‘One problem with that. My mother, the rat poison — it happened in Aberdeen.’

  35

  While the cat’s away …

  From the secret diary of Mary Watson

  6TH JULY 1880

  It’s ten in the morning. Bob was off at dawn to take the slugs to Cooktown in Isabella. He’s promised to be back in a few days, or even tomorrow, with a new broom, newspapers, mail and fresh oranges. Carrie’s collecting shells down on the beach. Porter has gone line-fishing on the north side of the bay. Percy and I are discussing the merits of a certain brass lamp he has set up on the small table between us. The door is open so that I can see or hear anyone approach.

  He holds the lamp up by its handle for me to peer through the overlapping triangles of glass.

  ‘It’s a simple set-up. The fewer moving parts the better with these things. Basically, what you have here is a kerosene-lit candle in a protective case. You control the flame with this wheel.’

  His long fingers turn the gauge one way and then the other. The flame obediently flares and subsides.

  ‘But surely that’s not enough light? And how do I direct it?’

  The comma of his smile twitches. ‘Meet the latest in nautical gadgetry: the polygon reflector.’ He tips what I thought was a fixed glass case up and down and then sideways. It makes the flame a distorted smear. ‘You can only really see how it works at night. It’s the same principle as a lighthouse. The panels concentrate the light according to which way they’re turned, like a segmented eye.’

  ‘How do I stop the candle going out in the wind?’

  He lifts a dark upturned box off the floor. ‘It’s shielded. The flame won’t blow out. Still, don’t remove this until you’re in position or there’s a danger dear husband will see the light. Neither do you want another boat caught in its crosslight. The beauty of the reflector is that you can direct the light with accuracy. Look here,’ he touchs a strip of metal atop the lamp with his index finger, ‘this is the sight, just like on a rifle. You wait for the signal from your contact, and aim at it like you’re about to shoot. You’ll need to keep it very steady. The feet,’ he points to four threaded bars in the wooden base, ‘are adjustable. You should be able to make it stable on any fairly hard surface, even a rough one. Any questions?’

  ‘Only a few that might make me sound stupid.’

  ‘It’s better to sound stupid now than to be stupid on top of that hill,’ he says.

  I look at the signalling lantern again. ‘I wonder why the process needs to be so complicated. I understand that the purpose of the signalling is to make sure the coast is clear of French boats so that Roberts’s handover of guns can proceed.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So the first boat will flash a message to me on Cook’s Look, and then I will relay it to you when you’re out fishing. Then you’ll signal another boat further up the coast.’

  ‘You don’t sound stupid yet.’

  ‘Why is the triangle necessary? Why can’t the signalling boat send his message directly to you?’

  ‘You don’t come from a nautical background, do you?’

  I shake my head. His eyes pass over the things on the table between us. He picks up a ball
of twine and holds it up.

  ‘The world is round. So is the ocean.’ He positions one finger either side of centre of the ball so that there is a swelling between them. ‘Imagine my fingers are two boats and this twine is the ocean. See the bulge that prevents them seeing each other? The distance vessels can signal at sea is limited by the ocean’s curve. The higher you are, of course, the further you can see. From Cook’s Look you can signal to both of us.’

  ‘I see. And the boat you intend to signal further up the coast is close enough not to need another high point like Cook’s Look.’

  ‘Correct. Any more questions?’

  ‘No,’ I tell him. ‘Not yet, anyway.’

  ‘Fine.’ He reaches into his trouser pocket and pulls out a narrow bundle wrapped in a rag. He unwinds it, revealing a silver-plated compass — brand new by the looks — three pencils, a folded sheet of paper and a box of matches. ‘The ship you’ll be signalling to will have no trouble finding Cook’s Look, but you won’t know where to look for her. I’ll give you the correct direction to search beforehand; that’s what the compass is for. The pencils and paper are for recording your messages. Keep them here.’ He rewraps the bundle and slips it under a metal clamp screwed to the lamp’s wooden base.

  He pushes a spring-loaded lever on the side of the lamp several times; it raises and lowers a black metal square over the glass front. ‘This is the shutter. Push it down and you’re signalling. Let it go and the beam is cut off.’

  He illustrates the effect by shining the light on the palm of his hand. It gives off a much brighter glow than I’d imagined.

  Percy continues on about how to exchange passwords with the contact, and with him when he’s positioned at his co-ordinates. How each message will need to be repeated; how to ask for a message to be repeated if there’s any confusion about what was sent; how to confirm that a message has been received. It’s complicated but it all makes sense. When he asks me to repeat what I’ve been told, I do so without hesitation.