The Book of Secrets

by Fiona Kidman

  ‘He said that he had followed prosperity,’ Kenneth Dingwall slipped in, as if this was what he had been waiting for someone else to say.

  ‘It’s exactly what we should do, I’m sure, father.’ Samuel McLeod’s eyes were alight at the prospect of new adventure.

  ‘Besides,’ said his older brother, Alexander, ‘I have heard there is gold there.’

  ‘That is not what we have come looking for,’ snapped McLeod.

  They all looked at him then. They were in a gully where the white bones of trees stood against the red landscape and McLeod, seventy-one now and older than they understood him when they saw him in their mind’s eye, shocked them with a flicker of uncertainty across his face.

  ‘Sometimes I wonder if you’re my sons at all,’ he said, looking around at the young men. They laughed, white teeth flashing against the newly acquired tan on their faces. ‘Gold and adventure, what kind of talk is that?’

  It was talk too naked, too unlike McLeod, some of them thought privately. It unsettled them to hear him speak like this, even if it was a family matter. It reminded them, as if they needed it, how strange their surroundings were, and how frightening.

  ‘Melbourne could only be better than this, whichever way you look at it,’ said Edward, the youngest, soothing him.

  ‘Aye, that’s true, lad. Are you all in agreement then?’

  ‘I think I’ll stay here,’ said John Fraser, who had rejoined them. ‘It may be possible to farm here; there are patches that don’t look so bad.’

  ‘And be parted from the rest of us?’ McLeod asked incredulously.

  The terror of the unknown was taking hold, but affecting each of them in different ways.

  ‘It may be our last chance,’ said John Fraser. ‘Perhaps all the good land in Australia is already taken.’

  ‘That’s nonsense,’ said McLeod. ‘It’s a vast continent. We are only on the edge of it.’

  ‘Still, I came for land, and I’m not sure that wandering on and on is going to make much difference.’

  Francis McClure, who had said nothing and stood at the back of the group, felt them waver.

  ‘I am going on, father,’ said Samuel. The brothers ranged themselves across the head of their convoy and all except John Fraser fell in naturally behind them.

  ‘It is God’s will,’ said McLeod. ‘We go to Melbourne.’

  It is not God’s will, thought Francis. It is the will of McLeod’s sons. They talked so much of God that he felt like a simpleton and a stranger amongst them. He was a sensual man who had been surprised and pleased by his wife’s enthusiasm for him, and was now disappointed that abortive childbearing and the passage to Australia seemed to have conspired against her interest in him. He had no idea why he was standing in a desert far from home.

  He found himself thinking of summer on Prince Edward Island, where the air was as crisp as an apple in the mornings and bees tumbled stupidly above flowers in the afternoons. He had been innocent then.

  In the tent cities of Melbourne where the gold rush had begun they paid high prices for food and shelter, and most of all for water. Donald, reunited with them, was apologetic that there was no land to be had, but he was sure that if they were patient something would eventuate soon.

  The heat sat inside Annie like a fever and when Francis rolled over towards her in the tent she cringed, cowering in the corner, wedged against the canvas as if he might reach and violate her.

  ‘We’re married, aren’t we?’ Francis said sharply as he pulled his boots off in the shelter of their tent awning, tired from a day’s labouring.

  ‘For the procreation of children,’ she muttered.

  ‘Aye, surely. But as we have no children, shouldn’t we be trying harder?’

  She turned her bleak face away.

  Outside, the tall blue-gum trees rustled and shivered and her skin crawled.

  Across the earth crept blue carpets of flowers. Patterson’s Curse. She was certain she, too, was afflicted with a curse. She glanced at herself to see if her skin was turning blue. It is the madness taking me, she thought. It comes to us sooner or later, it is in my family, this was bound to happen.

  She wrote to her mother.

  ‘… it is very pretty here. I am sure you would find it all most interesting. So much colour, so much light, such intensity.

  ‘There are days, though, when the light on the stones is so bright, that you would think for a moment, when you opened your eyes, that it was snow. A strange kind of illusion.

  ‘The air is full of birds, red and grey galahs everywhere, which soon remind us where we are. At night the sun fans out across the sky and is scarlet, then it drops away out of sight, and suddenly it is dark. All you can see is the outline of saltbushes. Often the dingoes howl, a weird noise if you are not accustomed to them.

  ‘Oh well, mother, one does become accustomed to many things in this life I suppose, and I hope that all is well with you and father and my brother, to whom I trust you will give my love. It might be better for Hector to wait awhile before he comes out here, for I am not sure what Reverend McLeod intends for all of us to do, just yet.’ From where McLeod stood, it looked like Pictou again. Melbourne was bawdy and dirty; bushrangers roamed the landscape and highwaymen lay in wait for miners returning to town with the receipts for their gold to be cashed at the Treasury. Already he had spent one night against his choice in the company of such men, and been permitted to pass in the morning when he said prayers to them. But whereas once he could have imagined people applauding his courage in the face of such danger, now they simply laughed and said how pleased the bushrangers must have been to be rid of him.

  The people were scattering, the dream sliding from his grasp. Those he had known since they were born frequently were unable to recognise him because they had had so much to drink. And now that the Highland Lass had arrived there were more people for him to give of his attention, spread out almost beyond his reach unless he moved night and day. He scurried round Melbourne with hectic fervour.

  Out in Canvastown food rotted, shit lay in piles on the ground and the water stank.

  The typhoid came then. It came to the tents like a romp in the night, not scrupulous in choosing its victims, dancing its way from one tent to another, then doubling back the way it had come in the dark.

  Week by week, in the inhospitable shelter of Canvastown, the symptoms spread. The McLeods were not excused. First Alexander became ill, then Samuel, and then Edward, bright and eager and the cleverest of the McLeod children. The flush on their cheeks turned to a rose-coloured rash. Their tongues became dry and brown, stiff like old leather. They wasted, picking at black spots which passed before their eyes, as if at flies on the wing, their hearing fading away.

  Annie prepared lemon juice made from fruit begged from a ship at the docks, made wine-whey from a good port added to boiling milk and cooled, and prepared animal broths thickened with rice and a little bread. These were the things said to be for the best and she was surprised that she learned so easily what to do, as if these remedies were in her bones. Some were helped by them, but the McLeods’ sons were beyond anyone’s help. One by one, the three youngest of them died: Alexander, then Samuel, then Edward.

  Mary McLeod had appeared in some miraculous way to have been restored by the voyage. It was as if, being old and of little consequence in her husband’s sight, she had less reason to watch her ways. Bundled amongst her friends young and old, the children who were sometimes frightened at nights turning to her for comfort, she appeared to her companions to have found a new independence. Those who had expected that she would not survive the journey had, instead, watched her grow in strength.

  On the goldfields when her sons lay dying she asked them to live, and when it was clear that they could not oblige her, it was she who organised their burials. One by one.

  ‘Is a Dia fein a’s buachaill dhomh, the Lord’s my shepherd, I’ll not want,’ she said.

  McLeod, alone and terrible in his grief afte
r a life of total certainty, faced the possibility that he might have offended God.

  With the strength of a much younger man, he strode night after night through the dirty streets of Melbourne, asking himself in relentless pain if his sons had been the price of his pride.

  It was in a dream, he told the people of St Ann’s at last, that he saw a way through what had befallen them.

  They must now, he said, proceed to New Zealand. Donald, inclined to letters and journalism, had had correspondence with people there and confirmed that New Zealand was a suitable solution to their problems. The dream was in order. McLeod had written to Sir George Grey, the Governor of New Zealand, and been informed that there was much good land to be had.

  ‘We all pay for our sins,’ Annie said as she and Francis prepared to leave Australia.

  ‘You’re not so keen on him now?’

  ‘Eh? Of course I am keen, as you call it. He’s our leader, struck down, that is all. We learn that even the greatest fall. And that we learn from their deliverance. But we must all suffer for our sins, sooner or later.’

  ‘Aye Annie. But come closer, eh? The nights are a bit cooler; you can’t go on complaining of the heat forever.’ His voice was pleading, though not hopeful.

  At his touch she became rigid.

  ‘Francis,’ she whispered, ‘it’s too soon.’ For she had lost another child which she had buried herself in the hard earth.

  ‘Aye.’ He turned himself heavily on the sacking bed strung between poles which they shared.

  ‘I repent my sins, Francis,’ she whispered.

  ‘Hey, what does that mean?’ he said, turning back to her, and fearing even before he looked at her to see some end between them, even though they were tied to each other forever.

  It was as he had expected.

  ‘There was lust between us,’ she said earnestly.

  ‘But his sins are not to do with us,’ he floundered, trying to relate her line of thought, and McLeod, to their estranged bed.

  In the dark her voice was confident. ‘But of course they are, Francis. His downfall is an education to us all, we who are so much less than he will certainly be punished if we do not heed the warnings we are given. Obedience, chastity, Francis. Passion is a curse. We must mortify the body. Oh Francis, I despise myself.’

  ‘But I don’t despise you. You’re so clever, so capable. Don’t you know, Annie, you’re becoming admired? The way you had hoped. You’re respected.’ And he said these things to her not only because they were what she wanted to hear, but because they were true.

  At the same time he was overcome with desolation.

  ‘We will do better if we go about things in a modest way,’ she said. ‘You do see? Yes, of course you must … Now let us go to sleep, and in the morning we shall go to New Zealand.’

  Looking back up through the awning of the tent, she could have sworn she saw a black-and-white cat, smiling and licking its paws, riding the antipodean sky.

  She lay there, her eyes closed as if she was alseep, and thought of her mother. She would have liked to be able to tell her things, but Isabella never seemed to have heard what she had tried to tell her. Would she listen now? On the ship to New Zealand perhaps she would write to her. She remembered how her mother had sat with a secret look on her face and composed entries in a journal which she did not show to anyone.

  Had she shown Duncan Cave? Who knew the secrets of her mother’s life?

  She wondered if anyone would ever want to know about her life as much as she longed to know about Isabella’s, or if it would even mean as much to anyone else. She thought of the children she had had, and who had already died before they drew breath, and now that her husband was snoring beside her she began to weep a little.

  After a while she decided that this was an indulgence; that it was no good preaching to him if she in herself was not strong.

  Later, from New Zealand, she wrote to her mother:

  Waipu, June 1854

  … We have at last settled down from our wanderings. The Reverend McLeod petitioned Governor Grey for holdings while we were in Auckland, where we have been this past year or more, waiting for the allocation of this land.

  We knew this was the place for us, for we had seen it from the sea as we approached New Zealand, and it looked like the shores of Nova Scotia. Yet, now that we are here, it is not really like that at all. It is lush, almost as I think you would imagine the tropics (perhaps that is only the opinion of someone who has seen the tropics, I do not know whether I would have been able to visualise them at all before I left St Ann’s). But the growth is so thick, there is no snow all year round, although a considerable amount of rain, and things just grow and grow. We have several cows and we fell a two acre of land about every week. Come the summer there will be a great burn-off of the bush.

  We have built a house from cabbage tree planks, but soon we are to have better, Francis has said.

  I have had another child but it has gone the way of the rest. Don’t worry, I will be all right.

  Your affectionate daughter, Annie McClure.

  To which Isabella wrote back:

  … I hope that your brother has now settled in New Zealand as well as you have.

  You will be sad to hear that my black cat Noah has died.

  Did you get my letter advising of your father’s death? It has not been so easy here since that event, though the neighbours are kind. There is a small brigantine, to be named the Spray, which is being built here for the purpose of travelling to New Zealand (and I believe that there are still more planned). People are clamouring to leave. They say the fire has moved out of this place, from north to south, now that McLeod has gone, and in spite of myself, I think they are right. Now that John Munro has left on the Gertrude things are very quiet indeed. Certainly, I was surprised that he went. There is an opinion here that if even he were prepared to pocket his pride and go, then it is virtually pointless to stay here. I made an early application for a berth on the Spray and have been successful. If you do not have room for me, no matter. I have a little money from the sale of the farm, and I can set up on my own. The balance of the money will be forwarded to you and Hector through your father’s solicitors.

  By the way, Duncan Cave has come back from Boston, and I am sure you will be pleased to hear that he is coming with me. The ship sails next month, and by the time you receive this, we will be on the high seas.

  Yours, kindly, Mother.

  P.S. Be sure to sleep on a good hard bed the next time you are with child. Some prescribe opium for miscarriage. I am against it. On no account have relations with your husband while you are carrying.

  PART FIVE

  Maria 1898–1953

  eighteen

  In the morning Maria thinks that the bird has flown away. She opens her eyes, hoping that it will still be there, peering at her from some corner of the room with its dark sharp eyes. She planned to give it crumbs from her toast for its breakfast. But at dawn the birds outside begin their morning oratory and she hears a stirring in the room, as if the bird, guided by them, is preparing to take its leave, finding its way back by the way it has come. She looks around and the room seems empty except for the curling newspapers on the walls and the old dresser that has stood in its place for a hundred years, the cracked pitcher in the bowl, the disintegrating crochet work, and a tiny yellowish picture of a man and a woman, tacked above her bed. Even now, this morning, she reaches up and touches the face of the young woman. In all the wide world she does not know where the young woman is. She is her talisman still. Some day she thinks the young woman will come.

  There is a humming in the air. She cannot place the sound though it grows and swells around her. It is a pretty sound but it holds a touch of menace too. She turns uneasily in the bed. ‘I am not afraid,’ she says to herself. ‘Nothing can frighten me any more.’ Later, she says, ‘I am too old to be frightened, it doesn’t matter what happens to me now.’ Only she wants to know what it is. ‘It will be all righ
t if I know,’ she murmurs aloud. Her fingers curl over the edge of the blanket, holding it tightly against her chin. After a while she falls asleep again, although it is not like her to sleep late into the morning.

  When she awakes the bird is sitting perched on the pillow beside her. She reaches out to touch it, but it hops out of reach, flies up to the rafters again, sits and stretches its wings and delivers a white turd on the floor beneath.

  The morning began with milky streaks in the sky, turning to marbled cirrus clouds, then the light changed to rose pink and glowed. It was perfect weather, almost as warm as a summer’s day.

  Watching from her window, Maria wondered if later she would be allowed to sit in the sun and soak up its warmth or if she would be watched. This was how it was each day. Alone in the house, she was aware that there were always people close by. It was as though they were afraid she might break loose and inflict some terrible damage if she walked past certain perimeters that had been laid down for her.

  The young woman thought that they were probably out there watching her now. Well, they wouldn’t have much to watch today; she could not run very far.

  She began to wash herself at the bowl, massaging the soap over her tightening stomach. The skin felt as if it would split, and at its base there were purple marks like lashes developing. She did not know what these marks were and wondered if the child was preparing to break its way out through these angry-looking welts, or if the welts were in fact the mark of God. Or Satan.

  They said Satan had taken her soul. Her uncle Hector has said she was a witch.

  So be it. She had danced at night with the Devil, and she was made of fairy air which was rising inside of her now. Last night a cat had stalked by and she had called out to it. For a moment that cat had paused, sniffed the wind, and made as if to go inside with her. Beyond, in the dark places where she could not see, where bush still pressed against the edge of the farm, something, or someone, called it back.