The Fringe of Leaves

by Patrick White

  ‘I should modify that, I suppose,’ Mr Roxburgh conceded, ‘by adding: in connection with myself.’ Once more the desperate neighing of some gaunt-ribbed gelding.

  She had halted close behind his chair, and leant, and put her arms around him, as though attempting to cleave to him as she had sworn. ‘It’s my loss that I can’t share your pleasures in the way you would wish.’ Her hot mouth drove her regret into the crown of his head. ‘It was too late when I started to learn. I shall only ever know what my instinct tells me.’

  ‘I would not have it otherwise.’

  She suffered him to twist the rings on her fingers.

  ‘There is almost nothing’, she sighed, ‘which cannot be changed for the better.’

  But in her own case, a kind of sensual apathy intervened as often as not between the intention and the act. Or, in the beginning, life to be lived.

  He had indeed lent her books, first of all the little one he called his ‘crib’ to the Bucolics when she brought the tray to the room. She had scarce read it, for it made her nervous to have a gentleman’s book in her keeping, and herself with little enough of education. Her hands were rough besides, from working in the fields, and milking when the wind blew from the north, or driving the cart to market at Penzance.

  ‘I’ll read ’n,’ she promised rashly, ‘but not while there’s daylight, and the hay not in.’

  She went away, proud if fearful of the book he had lent her.

  Mr Roxburgh must have felt incommoded by her leaning on him; he started fretting, and shrugging her off. ‘Why then, Ellen, don’t they weigh anchor?’ he asked as though he had never wondered at it before this evening.

  ‘Because the wind is not from the right quarter,’ she repeated with an equanimity she had cultivated, while settling the collar of the overcoat which her embrace had disarranged.

  The flower glowing in its chipped jar had been practically extinguished by the close of day; what sounded like a rat scampered somewhere through the dusk, back to business; water slithering on the vessel’s hull might have created an illusion of motion for any two souls less experienced in listening for it. The Roxburghs’ hearing was so finely tuned they all but jumped at sound of a pair of boots thudding down the companion-ladder, and when a hand rattled the loose door-knob, and a beard blundered through the slit of a doorway, and the face of Mr Courtney the mate became distinguishable, they were no less embarrassed for their shadowy thoughts.

  Mr Courtney was so solidly built, anything overwrought or inessential could only expect to be skittled. It was unlikely that the mate’s own mind would ever wander out of bounds, except perhaps during sleep, heaving in those more incalculable waters like one of the whales it delighted him to watch.

  Mr Courtney spouted rather than spoke, ‘Captain sends his compliments, but was called away, and you mustn’t wait dinner for him.’ As one accustomed to give orders rather than deliver speeches, the mate drew breath. ‘Other news—wind is veering, and unless we’re out of luck we’ll sail at dawn.’

  Cap in hand, Mr Courtney continued standing. The upper, whiter part of his forehead glimmered in the dusk above a leather mask fringed with whiskers, the effect of which might have made him look sinister had it not been for the ingenuous eyes. On discovering that Mr Courtney was the least sinister of men, Mrs Roxburgh had felt free during daylit moments to examine the texture of his weathered skin, for her own secret pleasure and his hardly concealed discomfiture. In spite of the broad wedding band the mate was not at ease with ladies.

  But rank compelled him to make the occasional effort. ‘Has the feller forgot to bring candles?’ His Adam’s apple jerked it out painfully.

  ‘On the contrary,’ Mrs Roxburgh answered, brighter than before, ‘we’ve had them all this while, but preferred to enjoy the evening light and our conversation.’ She patted her husband’s arm, asking him to support her, not so much in a falsehood as out of social expediency.

  ‘Nothing could have lit our gloom better than the news you’ve brought us,’ the gentleman contributed.

  Mr Courtney grunted and laughed together. ‘Hasn’t Sydney found favour with you?’

  ‘I can neither admire nor dislike what irritation prevents me seeing.’

  Her husband’s gravity so abashed the mate, Mrs Roxburgh lit the pair of yellow candles to alleviate a situation.

  His skin ablaze, Mr Courtney announced, ‘I’ll leave you, then. There’s things to attend to. And the feller’ll be fetching down your dinner in a jiffy.’ It implied that himself had found good reason why he should not sit down with the gentry.

  The instant after, he was gone; his great boots could be heard maltreating the timbers.

  Mrs Roxburgh’s spirits soared. She could have sung, and literally, but her music-making had never been admired. Instead her face reflected the joy she hoped to find in her husband, and indeed, the weight had been lifted even from Austin Roxburgh.

  So much so, he was moved closer to his wife, laughing without constraint, and pinched her on the chin. She might have been a child, not theirs, certainly (he would have been more guarded in the presence of their own) but a sympathetic substitute who would not grow up to accuse him, however mutely, of the folly of bringing her into the world.

  ‘I can’t express my feelings adequately,’ Mr Roxburgh blurted.

  That was obvious enough as he teetered with a joy and relief to which he was unaccustomed, the long, fastidious hands inspired to gestures equally foreign to them. The husband had never danced with his wife, yet at the moment, she sensed, they almost might have begun. Given more suitable conditions, she would have guided him through a few judicious steps guaranteed not to unbalance his importance or his dignity. Nobody must see him without those.

  Instead Mrs Roxburgh made the effort to control her own obstreperous exhilaration. ‘Quietly! Quietly, though!’ she advised. ‘You might bring on one of your attacks.’

  ‘My attacks!’ he snorted.

  At his moments of extravagance he wanted no one to present him with the bill; he was wealthy enough to ignore reason when it suited him.

  ‘When you are so much improved,’ she remarked perhaps imprudently.

  Austin Roxburgh was so far provoked that he pouted. To be coddled was intolerable; on the other hand, to be ignored might have struck him as worse.

  ‘Do you know where your drops are?’ she persisted in her role of solicitous wife.

  ‘Of course,’ he snapped, yet was in sufficient doubt to start working a couple of fingers around inside a waistcoat pocket.

  Mrs Roxburgh touched him to dispel an anxiety she could see rising. Her own eyes were filling and frowning at the same time; she too may have felt in need of some drug, tenderness rather than digitalis. But whatever the illness from which either suffered, the interior of the wooden ship shimmered an instant with stimulated hopes and tranquillized fears.

  When footsteps were again heard, of a flatter, more slithery persuasion than before. The ‘fellow’ who waited on them had taken advantage of the captain’s absence to ease a bunion by leaving off his boots. The horny feet slapping the boards gave out a sound not unlike that of a razor in conjunction with the strop.

  Spurgeon the steward (cook too, Mrs Roxburgh fancied) was a somehow disappointed character whose reactions were on the mournful side. His attempts at cleanliness failed to deceive, yet in spite of it all, they had grown attached to him, and it amused Mr Roxburgh, if not Spurgeon, to tease the fellow out of himself.

  ‘Well, Spurgeon, we’re about to embark on the next stage of our Odyssey,’ the gentleman launched his evening joke. ‘When we reach the island I trust you’ll find your Penelope has waited for you.’

  Spurgeon had long since given up expecting sense from any member of the educated classes, so did not bother to rack his brains, but grumbled in undertone to satisfy the superiors he was unable to avoid. The cloth he flung billowed an instant from his fingertips before settling miraculously on the table, its chart spread for further inspect
ion. Many an imaginary voyage had Mrs Roxburgh traced round the continents and archipelagos of the saloon table-cloth.

  Sight of the familiar, grubby cloth inspired her to fresh attempts at winning their steward’s approval. ‘Look, Spurgeon, my flower is still alive’ she indicated the teasel in its jar as though it were the symbol of some conspiracy between them.

  ‘I wouldn’ know that,’ he replied without deigning to look. ‘There’s a lot in this part of the world that looks alive when it’s dead, and vicey versy.’

  He continued absorbed by a problem of cutlery until somebody stuck his head through the doorway.

  ‘Hey, Mr Spurgeon,’ a boy called in what he might have hoped a voice the passengers would not hear, ‘the chook’s all but fell apart.’

  Spurgeon left to perform more esoteric duties with a stateliness sometimes achieved by thin people of painful bones.

  By the time Mrs Roxburgh had washed her hands and smoothed her hair, and added a pair of ear-rings to match the intaglio brooch, the steward re-appeared with a tureen.

  ‘The captain’s compliments,’ he said, ‘there’ll be sweetbreads atop of this, and a fowl. Better make the most of ’em, because the salt tack is all you can expect from now on.’

  As the passengers sat restraining with their spoons the circles of grease which eddied on the surface of the soup, Mr Roxburgh noticed his wife’s ear-rings. ‘I believe you would dress yourself up, Ellen, for a breakfast of yams and opossum with savages in the bush.’

  ‘I would dress myself up for my husband,’ she replied, ‘if he was there.’

  Downcast eyes did not prevent a certain fierceness of expression, and it pleased him to think he had dominion over a divinity, even one whose beauty was wrapped in nothing more mystical than a cloud rising out of a dish of greasy soup.

  As the evening progressed the sweetbreads proved to have disintegrated; the fowl had not done likewise because held together by antipodean muscle; and excessive sugar in the bread pudding soothed the palate at least, after the bitter ale in which the diners had drowned the worst of their revulsion.

  Too familiar to each other, they sat and crumbled untidy fragments of conversation.

  ‘The brown woman—that eagle—or vulture, would peck out a man’s liver for tuppence.’

  ‘You are unkind to ladies on principle, but depend on them more than most men.’

  ‘Do you think there are rats on board? I could swear I felt one run across me in my sleep.’

  ‘In your sleep! Since we left home, I’ve experienced worse awake. A dream rat is nothing, Mr Roxburgh!.’

  ‘A sea voyage is recuperative.’

  ‘Did you like the man? I liked the man better than the women.’

  ‘He was somebody to whom I had nothing to say.’

  ‘Tisn’t always necessary. There are simple, honest men who put us to shame. We ought to be silent with those.’

  Silence fell on the remains of the valedictory meal.

  ‘That is the kind of man your Mr Merivale is,’ she broke in with uncharacteristic harshness. ‘He has got wisdom in a hard country. He was always, I think, a countryman at heart, and most country folk are not for sellin’ what they know, or else,’ she raised her chin to recover her balance and her husband’s good opinion, ‘they dun’t want to be thought soft.’

  But Mr Roxburgh had neither heard nor seen, it appeared, as he rolled little pellets of grey bread. ‘Merivale was Garnet’s friend. They racketed over the county on horses. It’s a wonder they didn’t break their necks.’

  In spite of the pellets he continued rolling Mr Roxburgh was far removed from his physical activity.

  ‘Garnet has thickened. It’s surprising he didn’t re-marry. They say he’s attractive to women, and that there are several who would accept an offer.’

  ‘There are those who have his interests at heart. So I gathered.’

  ‘And were you surprised?’

  ‘Who am I to pass judgment on a man I only slightly know?’

  ‘But surely you formed an opinion?’

  ‘My opinion is that your brother is noticeably attached to his brother.’

  ‘We were always fond of each other. That is natural—something, Ellen, I should have thought you might accept.’

  ‘Oh, but I do! Indeed I do!’

  He heard the exasperated swish of petticoat as she came round the table and knelt beside him. In her agitation Mrs Roxburgh had dragged the cloth askew, threatening the remnants of their bread pudding.

  ‘I can accept anything’, she said, ‘for the sake of peace—in this frightening world’ and held her head for him to stroke.

  Upon realizing, he obliged.

  ‘Listen to the silence!’ Ellen Roxburgh shivered. ‘To the water!’

  From the moored vessel, each sounded immeasurable.

  ‘I’ll listen gladly’, he told her, ‘when I hear it flowing against our sides.’

  ‘Flowing and flowing. For months and months.’

  Although their ship remained stationary, the cosmos revolved about them as he caressed her head with the short circular motions he had cultivated as a sickly boy, when a cat he owned would spring and curl up on his lap. It sometimes occurred to him on remembering Tabby that he had not been on better terms with any living being.

  Possibly due to excitement over their promised departure, or the recurring taste of bread pudding, Mrs Roxburgh felt slightly sick.

  Falling asleep she had resolved to wake at dawn, to watch their passage through Sydney Heads, and perhaps contribute something of her own strength of will to their setting out. But when she awoke the light had matured, and was flowing dappled over the timbers, like water itself. She lay a few moments to watch the light and allow wakefulness to seep back into filleted limbs and a stuffy mind. Then she realized the air too, was flowing, that the vessel was plunging and groaning, in different directions it seemed at first, and that her slippers had slithered from the place where she had stood them in a neat pair the night before.

  Bristol Maid was already at sea.

  So Mrs Roxburgh screwed up her eyes, and bit her lips, though not to the extent of experiencing pain. She put out her arms to embrace the cold future, for no voyage fails to provoke a sensual shudder in the beginning. Then she clambered carefully down. It had angered her husband to find the carpenter had fitted their cabin with bunks one above the other instead of side by side. But Mrs Roxburgh pointed out that such an arrangement would have left no room, and calmed him by offering to take the upper berth. It was out of the question that he, in his precarious state of health, should scramble up and down during a voyage of months, and she had soon grown adept at reaching and leaving her shelf without disturbing him in any way.

  Now, while unbuttoning and divesting in the chill morning, she observed her husband. Mr Roxburgh lay stretched asleep. Always when laid to rest behind his features, they appeared the finer for it, and this, together with an exaggerated pallor on the morning of Bristol Maid’s departure, might have given her cause for alarm had the gravity of her own thoughts not been relieved by the expression on his face. Mr Roxburgh’s chin had receded under the influence of sleep. He was blowing through his mouth with an intensity verging on desperation, sucking in, from beneath a jutting lip, the draughts of air vouchsafed him. It was comical as well as touching. She might have laughed had she not toppled and bruised her thigh against one of the many corners with which their small cabin was furnished.

  When she had regained her balance and taken off her nightgown, her skin appeared already to have darkened in warning of the bruise to come. It made her body look too white, too full, too softly defenceless, though in normal circumstances her figure would not have been considered noticeably ample.

  She finished dressing at a speed which did not dispel a mood of faint melancholy nourished by tenderness and resignation. At such moments she was consoled to think she understood their marriage.

  In the same state of conviction or delusion she climbed the companion
-ladder. Bristol Maid was labouring by now. What had seemed a morning of limpid light in the cabin below was in fact tatters of increasing grey. The wind blowing from the south had begun fetching up fog as well; great clouts of dirty fog caught in the rigging before tearing free. The sea rolled, still revealing glints of a glaucous underbelly, but its surfaces were grey where not churned into a lather of white. She was reminded of a pail she had withdrawn too quickly from a cow’s threatening heels and how the ordinarily mild milk had run as hot as the despair she felt for her clumsiness. So a shrieking of gulls in the present came closer to sounding human. Mrs Roxburgh kept up her spirits by watching the more unearthly rise and fall of their immaculate wings.

  At the same time she was carried staggering across the deck, clinging, with an alarm she could not quite laugh off, to any object which offered itself. Whatever she touched, ratline or bulwark, or her own person, was drenched with salt moisture. She had battened down her bonnet with a scarf, and swathed her shawl closer to her form, and would advance of her own volition whenever it became possible, arms rigid against her sides, hands stiff as butter-pats, till reaching the mainmast and comparative security.

  Here she was sighted by Captain Purdew, who immediately left a group composed of Mr Pilcher the second mate, a couple of seamen, and one she presumed was the boatswain from the authority he exercised and the quantities of hair which overgrew him. Even the captain, for all his professional experience, seemed to make only human headway against the careening deck, thrusting himself into the wind, hands clutching fortuitously at holds of rope.

  He reached a point where she caught sight of his teeth; then his voice arrived, but coldly. ‘Are you afraid,’ he called, ‘Mrs Roxburgh?’