The Fringe of Leaves

by Patrick White

  There began a great soaping, she could smell it, and then a flannelling, which made her suddenly leap, and withdraw unsociably into a corner of her pricking throne.

  ‘There, there! Gently!’ said the woman, and modified her actions in accordance. ‘What is your name, love?’ she asked.

  ‘Ellen.’

  ‘Ellen what?’

  There was the slip-slop of dreamy water, the passage of a sweating, soaped flannel.

  The woman did not press for an answer. ‘I am Mrs Oakes,’ she informed instead. ‘And my husband—Ted Oakes—was a sergeant in his day. We come here with the first contingent. We was Wilshur folk. Ted received a grant for ’is services, and that is ’ow we is farmin’ beyond Brisbane River.

  ‘It’s a good life,’ she added, in case her patient might not believe.

  Ellen Gluyas was only too ready. She sat whimpering in the dark house, moved by all that her senses recalled, through creaking boards and warm flannel, somewhere the smells of milk and smoked bacon, and was it—yes, it was raw wool. Outside, cows’ hooves were thudding homeward down a hard path. She thought that she might not be able to endure this onslaught by the present on accumulated memory.

  ‘Will we sit you right in the bath, Ellen?’ Mrs Oakes inquired.

  Ellen shook her head. She was afraid that, if she spoke, a bubble might shoot out of her mouth instead of words.

  ‘Well, not yet perhaps,’ Mrs Oakes agreed. ‘Everythin’ gradual like.’

  She would have been at a loss after that had her patient not informed her, ‘I lost my wedding-ring, which I brought almost here, threaded on a vine, carrying it all the way from the wreck.’

  Mrs Oakes was at once suspended. ‘You’re a survivor’, she asked, ‘from the wreck we’ve ’eard tell about? From the Bristol Maid?’

  It had become too terrible to answer.

  ‘Are you Mrs Roxburgh?’ the woman asked.

  The patient shook her head. ‘You won’t persecute me? And string me up to the triangles? No one will believe, but a person is not always guilty of the crimes they’s committed.’

  ‘Come, love, you mustn’t work yourself into a state. Nobody’s goin’ to persecute you.’

  ‘Not when I’m guilty? Not wholly—but part.’

  In the silence which followed, except for the stirring of water and the squeezing of a flannel, she ventured to add, ‘I am not Mrs Roxburgh, whatever you may think. I am Mab, but can’t tell you her other name.’

  Mrs Oakes must have stolen away, for Ellen overheard soon after, ‘When the boys come in, John must take a fresh horse, Ted, and ride to the settlement, and tell as we have a survivor, and ask what we should do. ’Tis the one they call Mrs Roxburgh, an’ the poor thing deleerious.’

  From the grumbles and the shuffles, Ted Oakes must have wished they had not been saddled with any of this. It was his wife who appeared the sergeant.

  ‘It’s our duty,’ she reminded, ‘and now come and give me a ’and to lift ’er on the bed.’

  They hoisted Mab to higher than she had been accustomed. She lay squirming amongst the wool and feathers.

  ‘Do tha want to suffocate me?’ she cried.

  But settled after a pat or two.

  The boys must have returned home. She heard male bodies fling themselves down on benches, questioning, then groaning and protesting, as they slurped at some kind of pottage. She heard fists slammed against a table, and after an interval, the angry hoof beats of a horse urged too abruptly from a walk into a canter.

  Mrs Oakes brought a yellow candle, then another, which did not so much illuminate the darkness as obscure any part of the room which lay beyond their vicinity.

  ‘What would you like to your supper?’ she asked, as though she might produce any manner of delicacy.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Mrs Roxburgh replied, fretting her head against the feather pillow. ‘If I can remember, my maid will bring me it on a tray.’

  Mrs Oakes did not wait, but went and fetched a bowl of something.

  ‘There!’

  She spooned a mess, soft, sweet, and bland, into the patient’s mouth. It made Ellen cry, even as she masticated and swallowed: she was not equal to the memories it evoked. For that reason she was soon fed, and clamped her jaws together whatever ideas her nurse had.

  ‘This way we’ll never get you better.’ Mrs Oakes sighed.

  She left the room with the tepid bread-and-milk barely touched.

  Now that her eyes were more accustomed to the light Mrs Roxburgh took advantage of her nurse’s absence to explore the room from where she lay. It was of an altogether gaunt appearance, its walls of unadorned grey slab. As far as she could distinguish, the few sticks of furniture could never have possessed any but the humblest virtues. What might have passed for embellishment was of such a rudimentary nature it must have been done to occupy the craftsman rather than to beautify a chair or cupboard. Because her own furniture came crowding round her, the whole rout of barley-sugar or fluted legs, explosive silks, chiming crystal, under the brooding swags of cynical brocade, she closed her eyes. (In any event, none of it was hers, less than ever since she had elected to go dredging the sewers.)

  When her eyes were again opened she noticed between shutters left ajar a face darker than the night around it.

  She might have shrieked had not her nurse been standing by the bed.

  ‘Have they come for me?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The blacks!’

  Mrs Oakes said, ‘That is Jemmy. I would trust ’im—and all of our natives—if Ted and the boys were gone a month.’

  It was innocence on Mrs Oakes’s part. Mrs Roxburgh did not believe she would trust anybody, whatever their colour. She would not trust herself, she thought.

  Suddenly she began to shiver. ‘Do you suppose they’ll be gone a month?’

  ‘Why—no!’

  Mrs Oakes latched the shutters after slamming them to.

  She felt her patient’s brow and went and brought some bitter-tasting stuff.

  When she had extricated herself from the relentless and evilsmelling spoon, Mrs Roxburgh gasped, ‘My husband was an invalid.’

  ‘Your husband?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Mrs Oakes laid the spoon in a saucer.

  ‘Delicate though he was, Mr Roxburgh would have made every effort to save me—had not those blacks murdered him.’

  ‘Tt! Tt!’

  ‘Poor Jack! My dearest husband!’

  ‘Don’t fret yourself, pet. I’ll stay ’ere beside you. No one will harm you—unless it be a dream. I can’t prevent dreams, can I? only break up the attack when I see it takin’ place.’

  Mrs Oakes was arranging herself on the leather-and-horsechair throne.

  Mrs Roxburgh raised herself amongst the feather pillows. ‘They’ve murdered Mr Roxburgh, but will the whites—kill Jack?’

  Mrs Oakes decided to doze.

  The same limping, waterlogged boat brought them to the shores of morning, Mrs Oakes’s large face misshapen from resting on the leather gunwale, Mrs Roxburgh’s limbs probably for ever rusted, her lips so tightly gummed she could not masticate the air.

  Mrs Roxburgh informed her fellow survivor, ‘On most of these islands there’s shellfish aplenty, but see that you don’t tear your hands. And water—can we but sop up the dew with our handkerchiefs.’

  Mrs Oakes was putting up her hair by instinct. ‘What I’ll bring you will put more heart into you than any rotten whelks—unless you don’t fancy a fresh egg, an’ cup of milk warm from the cow.’

  Mrs Roxburgh did not refuse what she felt she should have denied herself, considering.

  By the time Mrs Oakes brought her offerings Mrs Roxburgh had persuaded herself that she was justified in accepting them. ‘With his spear and net, he need never starve, I’m thankful to say. Otherwise, how should I swallow this egg?’

  ‘I don’t rightly know, dear,’ Mrs Oakes replied; she would have liked to, none the less.

  A mouthfu
l of egg revolved on Mrs Roxburgh’s tongue as she ruminated on the sounds which reached her: hens drooling at their morning work, hornets vibrant inside a wall, a calf which must have been deprived of the teat. After the nurse withdrew, the patient dozed, while the hours twittered away. If she opened her eyes, nothing was so insignificant that it failed to amaze. She would stare at the whorl in a worn floor-board, the necklace of wax on an extinct candle, a pool of light lying thick and yellow as the egg-yolk of earlier, until drowsiness possessed her afresh.

  From the heaviness surrounding her she judged that it must have been towards noon when she heard the sound of hooves in the yard, and first one, then a second dismounted rider, who proceeded to exchange indistinct remarks.

  Whatever was in store for her she hoped she might acquit herself convincingly.

  Spurs were soon ajingle in the passage, which shuddered at the same time with what she had come to recognize as her nurse’s approach.

  Mrs Oakes’s honest cheeks were glowing with heat and pleasure, as well as relief. ‘This is Lieutenant Cunningham, dear, surgeon to the garrison. Now we can be sure that you will get the best attention this side of Sydney.’

  ‘Mrs Roxburgh?’ The young lieutenant’s voice rang out in a determined effort to assert his rank and sex.

  The gong sounding in her head so bemused her she could not have denied the worst accusation.

  The surgeon picked up her wrist which, by that shuttered light, might have been a scroll of sloughed bark. She could feel him slightly trembling. His practical profession’s abstract side allowed him, while taking her pulse, to display a certain mystical detachment and avoid looking at the patient’s face.

  For the moment she was free to investigate her visitor. Where her nurse was red, the doctor was pink, not yet cured by the climate she supposed. There was an edging of white where his neck joined the collar of his tunic. From its glimmering in the darkened room, she took this white band to be skin. It added something unprotected and tender to the young man’s general appearance, and this, together with the deferential, slightly tremulous hold on her wrist, led her to suspect that the lieutenant had never yet experienced passion.

  At once she grew ashamed of her thought and looked to see whether her nurse had intercepted it, but the room was too dark, and of course, both her attendants too innocent.

  It only now occurred to Mrs Roxburgh that self-knowledge might remain a source of embarrassment, even danger.

  ‘More light, please, Mrs Oakes.’ It was evident that Lieutenant Cunningham was more at ease with older women and in giving orders to subordinates.

  As Mrs Oakes pushed back a shutter the patient winced for the shaft of light which was aimed at her. She might have felt more exposed had she not realized that she must remain a mystery to them: her body, for which they were concerned, was the least part of her.

  She lay passive, though one corner of her mouth twitched in the direction of a smile as the surgeon, assisted by Mrs Oakes, carried out his examination.

  ‘Ticklish, are we?’ The nurse laughed indulgently.

  The doctor frowned. ‘Captain Lovell sends his compliments,’ Lieutenant Cunningham delivered the message with a formal earnestness not unmixed with personal goodwill, ‘and is looking forward to hearing your own account of your adventures as soon as your health is fully restored. I shall see to that,’ he assured her, knocking once or twice on her ribs to emphasize his authority, ‘and Mrs Oakes,’ he was polite enough to add. ‘We shall have you on your feet in no time, and bring you down to Moreton Bay.’

  Mrs Roxburgh could not envisage it; she cowered. ‘My feet would not stand another journey. They are ruins.’

  ‘We shall send a carriage. Well, it’s not sprung! But the best we can provide.’

  ‘Surely we might be attacked by blacks—or worse, escaped prisoners?’

  The lieutenant was amused. ‘Don’t worry. You’ll have a military escort.’

  Mrs Roxburgh’s distress was not relieved. ‘Shall I have to listen to the prisoners’ screams as they receive the lash?’

  Now it was the surgeon’s turn to feel distressed; he had never dealt with a similar situation. ‘You’ll find the Commandant’s a humanitarian, unlike his predecessor, of whom I can see you must have heard.’

  ‘What became of the predecessor?’

  The young man had broken out in a sweat; his golden whiskers could not disguise it. ‘He met with an accident.’

  ‘Was he murdered? Or simply killed?’

  ‘Better if you don’t inquire into painful matters which don’t concern you.’

  A pulse had begun fluttering in her throat. ‘It does concern me—why the good and the bad are in the same boat—and the difference between killing and murder. Until we know, we shan’t have justice—only God’s mutton for Sunday dinner—those of us who are lucky enough.’

  Seeing that she was beside herself, he turned away.

  ‘Do you play at cat’s-cradle?’ she asked.

  Instead of answering, the surgeon produced a selection of medicaments out of a valise he must have unstrapped from his saddle, and after taking the nurse aside, gave his instructions in a low voice.

  Then again, in the louder, jollier tones intended to reach the ears of the sick, ‘It’s chiefly a matter of rest, Mrs Oakes, and nourishment. Mrs Roxburgh is lucky in having a very remarkable constitution. She’ll live to a ripe old age, I’d say.’

  But Mrs Roxburgh whimpered back, ‘What shall I do with a ripe old age? Without my husband?’

  Mrs Oakes sucked her teeth, and clucked, ‘Dear Lord, how pitiful! But it’s only to be expected,’ and the amiable young surgeon joined in, ‘You’ll change your mind, you will see, Mrs Roxburgh. Mrs Lovell herself is organizing a wardrobe. All the ladies are contributing. It will be that much easier now that we know your size and shape.’ He checked himself, again embarrassed, but hurried on towards his departure. ‘You can rest assured, ma’am, of a warm welcome. We had heard of the wreck of Bristol Maid and were shocked to think of what we imagined the loss of everybody else on board.’

  ‘How did you hear?’ Mrs Roxburgh asked.

  In the end, she could not trust (oh, she should have known!) this hitherto amiable, but too glossy, too fulsome young man.

  ‘We heard from the only known survivor. Of course there may be others still to be discovered, as you have been. I hope there are.’

  She looked at him out of eyes which he afterwards failed to describe for the Commandant. ‘All dead. Some of them probably eaten. Only the condemned survive.’

  At that the surgeon took his leave, but heard the voice muffled by the door which Mrs Oakes had closed behind them. ‘I ask nothing for myself. Only a pardon for my poor husband. I am the one who has committed the crime. I think he could not believe in me. For that reason, he ran back.’

  It was something at least that stout Mrs Oakes was shaking the house in conducting him away from the sick-room, but the voice of darkness continued faintly pursuing the surgeon. ‘Even if Jack is not—destroyed—if he simply lies down and dies—I must give myself up as his murderess.’

  That evening the nurse felt so ravaged and exhausted after her duty the night before, as well as the necessary attentions she had lavished on the patient during the day now past, she said to her husband when she had fed him, together with their three voracious sons, ‘I’d take it kindly, Ted, if you’d sit up with Mrs Roxburgh tonight. I do believe I’m at the end of me tether—temporary like,’ she hastened to assure him.

  Ted Oakes, a large man, looked so alarmed his wife might have felt justified in congratulating herself had she been harbouring a grudge against him.

  But Mrs Oakes was without malice even when he muttered, ‘I dursn’t, Emily. What would I do if she wet ’erself?’

  ‘You probberly wouldn’t know,’ she answered, ‘or if she was to tell you, well you’d only have to rouse me i’ the room beyond.’

  Ted Oakes continued heaving and shaking his enormous form to signif
y his unwillingness. ‘And’, he said, ‘if she was to start quizzin’ me? I never ’ad no practice at conversin’ with a lady.’

  ‘Between ourselves, the poor soul may not be all that of a lady.’

  Mrs Oakes did not elaborate, but after she had washed the dishes, and scoured the pan, and he had smoked his second pipe, and she had dosed the patient, and doused the candles, excepting one which she hid behind a little, hitherto useless screen embroidered by Emily herself during a slow courtship, she manœuvred her victim in the direction of the leather-and-horsehair throne. ‘There!’ she did not actually command. ‘’Tis no more than the edge of the battlefield, beside the doorway, hid behind this blessed screen, and call out to me if need be. She, poor thing, wouldn’ notice if Jemmy was in your place, she’s too heavy with the laudanum prescribed by Mr Cunningham.’

  Without waiting for outright refusal Mrs Oakes left her husband to it.

  It was an occurrence more alarming than any in Sergeant Oakes’s experience, worse even than mutiny at the prisoners’ barracks, or when some bolter or other ambushed the captain and they brought his body down from the mountain, the head all bloody where the eyes had been, the cock and ballocks cut off of him. Yet now it was but a still night, in which his son’s snores in the adjoining room competed with the stranger’s breathing the other side of the flimsy screen.

  Were she to wake! Sergeant Oakes was running cold between his flannel and his skin. But might have dozed.

  He was roused by a wind which had risen, and which was rustling round the eaves and under any shingles which happened to be loose; or no, it was this woman’s voice.

  ‘Is it you, Mr Roxburgh—Austin?’

  The sergeant was too terrified to answer.

  ‘Then I know it isn’t. Mr Roxburgh had nothing against me. Or has he?’ she sighed. ‘It is hard to tell what human beings may have done to one another.’

  The watcher’s flesh would have prickled without benefit of the horsehair with which his chair was stuffed.

  ‘I know who it is,’ the woman assured him. ‘It’s Jack. There’s no need to be afraid. Give me your hand at least, my darling. I’ll show you. I’ll put it where it will warm quickest.’