The Book of Secrets

by Fiona Kidman

  Under the tree Hector McIssac had at last joined his sister. His sons William and Neil and their wives stood uneasily for a time watching their cousin before moving away from the crowd. William, the elder, looked apologetically at his wife, as if to ask forgiveness for having embroiled her in such a family mess. Neil, however, smaller and always quieter and quite unlike his brother in appearance, with eyes and nose akin to Isabella’s, looked over his shoulder after Maria with an anxious frown. Beside him his new wife Stella, tiny and bubbling with the excitement of the drama that had been unfolding before them, clung to his arm. He appeared not to notice her and continued to watch after Maria. At last he raised a puzzled shoulder and shook his head as if dismissing what he had seen.

  Coldly Hector was offering Annie his arm.

  ‘The roadmender was in church,’ he said.

  She nodded, and a way between the people parted to let them through. The horses stamped their feet and their carriage drew away in the opposite direction to that which Maria had taken, detouring by a back road as he bore his sister towards his home.

  The sun was high and burning as Maria walked. She was surrounded by the bright clear light that fills the north in summer; a time when the surf beats on the long line of the beach known as the Cove; when out at sea a purple haze lies over the Hen and Chicken Islands, and all along Bream Bay from the Head to the Tail the fishermen cast their lines or gather shellfish. The blazing pohutukawas had spilled their spiked petals over the banks above the sand, the grasses moved in a soft and constant rustle and only the stands of bush, increasingly isolated by the advance of the axeman and the fire, offered cool refuge.

  She faltered. In the bright light and the quivering gold air she seemed to be walking into black spots. Red lines raced before her eyes and she thought she would fall. She knew, without looking, that her mother would not follow her now.

  A carriage passed her, and another. In the carriages were girls, young women she had studied with at school, riding beside their parents. Their eyes were studiously averted; they were putting more effort into avoiding the sight of her than she ever remembered them applying to literature or needlework.

  She reached a stand of totara and stepped into the trees. The air was filtered and green where the beginning of a clearing had been made. She sat on the ground and put her head between her knees. She did not know why she had behaved as she had. Indeed, reviewing the past few months of her life, she did not understand any of it. She thought about Branco, who had come back to look for her as she expected he would, and there was an odd dead weight inside her, as if he was untidy luggage that she would like to find somewhere to put down. Since the beginning of winter she had carried the thought of him around, brooding on him every moment of the day, and now she did not want to do so any more.

  The revelation was frightening in its implications.

  It appeared that she had just divorced herself from her own community on account of a man she no longer wanted to know. She turned the idea of him carefully over in her mind, trying to work out why she felt so disinclined towards him and whether in fact she had ever cared for him at all.

  Is it the difference of him, she wondered. Perhaps it had got to her at last, the way people looked down on the gumdiggers. For a moment she felt ashamed.

  Then it occurred to her that it was difference that she had sought. It was neither race, nor the faith of either of them, nor occupation, nor language which separated them; it was all of these things, but it was also these considerations which had drawn her to him. If this was what using someone was, then she had used Branco to drive herself to make a declaration of her independence from the community.

  Now, it seemed, she had finished with him.

  Sitting under the tree, away from the gaze of passersby, she was less than impressed with what she saw in herself.

  The black spaces accumulated.

  ‘He was there to look on you with your airs and graces, wasn’t he? Well, answer me. Wasn’t he?’

  Her uncle’s pink face, rimmed with frosty whiskers, was thrust towards hers. She could smell his breath, heavy with a sourness she could not identify. Behind him, in her old chair but like a guest in her own house, sat her mother. She really is old, Maria thought. Not just getting old, the way she’s always talking about it, but an old fat tired woman.

  ‘I couldn’t have stopped him from coming. It’s a public place of worship.’ Wanting to placate her now, ready to give in to anything in order to win back her love.

  ‘And you’re not ashamed that he defiled it on your account? You would know he’s a Papist?’ Hector’s jowls quivered with indignation.

  Looking from one to another, Maria felt herself slipping into the darkness again. Part of her wanted her mother’s forgiveness, but another part of her was suggesting that it was time to shake the dust of Waipu off her shoes. She had dreamed of the wider world; now might be the time to find it. Even if it was no further than Auckland, that would be far enough. She could learn to dance, and be presented at Government House; she would like to walk in wide streets and look in shop windows; perhaps she might even study at the Institute some higher form of learning, as she had heard young women were doing these days.

  It began to crystallise in front of her, a gleaming prospect.

  ‘Maybe he wants to change his faith,’ she said wearily.

  ‘You have been seeing him then? You know what’s in his mind?’

  ‘I didn’t say that.’

  ‘Then what are you saying, pray?’

  ‘There’s no need to set on him, on me. It’s nothing. Give me a chance and I’ll show you.’

  ‘A chance. We’ll give you a chance.’ Her mother and her uncle exchanged heavy looks across her head. Maria started towards the door in involuntary escape but her uncle stood to bar the way.

  She hesitated, knowing that she was about to lose something, to capitulate to something from which she might never recover.

  ‘Go into your room, Maria.’

  ‘Mother, I am not a child.’

  ‘You are still my child.’

  ‘I will not.’

  ‘She is like our mother,’ said Hector, turning to Annie. His voice was regretful.

  ‘If I do not?’ asked Maria.

  ‘You will be put there.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘To think about your wicked ways. And to put you out of reach of the beast that stalks you.’

  ‘Mother.’ She was entreating her now.

  ‘After a time, and when you have said your catechism for a month or so, we will think about what’s to be done with you.’

  Looking at Annie, Maria could see with terrible clarity what she had never truly divined in her mother before: a sense of outrage at the ways of the world, and how personally she took them.

  Her mother and Hector could not contain her if she resisted them. But if she were to run, there was only the bush and the river to which she might flee. Who, of the riverboat men, would take her aboard? And she was without clothing or money or supplies. A departure must be on her own terms. The vision of her uncle and his sons advancing upon her in a paddock, or as she cowered like an animal behind a tree, rose up before her.

  Her voice sounded like a child’s in her ears. ‘I’ll go to my room now, mother,’ she said. ‘We can talk about this when my uncle has gone.’

  It was a long walk, from where she stood to the doorway, but she hoped to achieve it with dignity.

  Then blackness overwhelmed her, and when she woke she was lying in her bed with the door closed. Through the window, stars held steady in the darkness beyond. Soon it would be light, she thought, soon this blackness will go away. But even as she raised herself on her elbow her head swam. It was next day before she woke.

  From the kitchen she smelt sour skimmed milk which her mother placed near the fire to warm until the curds were formed. There would be a cheese at lunchtime. The bread had been baked too. All was well. She strained her ears for the sound of her mother’s mo
vements. When she heard nothing, she got out of bed and put on her robe, keeping her own movements stealthy although unsure exactly why she should. Still there was no sound from beyond the door. She took the handle but when she tried to turn it she found it locked.

  On the other side of the timber dividing them, her mother’s voice raged.

  ‘That’s where you’ll stay,’ Annie shouted, ‘and your uncle’s coming with bars to seal the window, and you’ll read your Bible and think it through. There now, kicking’ll do you no good, nor screaming. Oh Maria, Maria,’ and her voice turned to keening, full of grief. ‘It’ll do you no good, I can’t relent now, and it’s all for your own good, my darling girl, now there, no more, I know what is good for you, I do, I do. I know.’

  twenty

  The bird beats itself against the window, again and again with terrible force. Something has frightened it. Maria does not know what it is, or what she has done. She thinks that the source of terror is outside the house. She understands this and feels helpless, unable to reassure the bird. Now it flies up to the rafters and dashes itself there, falling stunned to the ground. Maria moves to pick it up, but it opens a bleary eye, shakes itself, hops up on one foot, and takes off again, its beak extended in a silent shriek.

  There is a ledge between the end of the rafter and the top of the wall. The sparrow takes refuge here, and sits with its wings half extended, quivering all over. He holds his leg in such a way that Maria wonders if it is damaged.

  ‘You’ll do yourself a mischief, little bird,’ she whispers. ‘It’s no good going on like this, there’s no way you’ll escape. We have to work at it together. Why don’t you just sit quietly there while I find you a seed or two, something to keep your strength up.’

  The bird sits still on its perch, utters a cheep. She thinks she is getting through to it.

  ‘I’m a witch, you know, witches don’t hurt wild creatures, they’re wild creatures themselves, yes that’s what we are. Don’t you know that, little bird? Eh? There, there, you’re settling. There, you’re not so frightened. I’ll just sit here quietly and see what you do, wild one. No, I know you’re not ready to come down yet, I won’t move, you’re safe here.’

  For a moment she thinks she can walk over to the bird and kneel beside it, before she remembers that she is on the floor and he is in the ceiling. This is an old dream, where she walks around the room at the level of the mantelpiece, or higher. Many times when half awake she has believed that she is walking across the world, above rooftops, her feet slicing cleanly along, the air holding her up. In dreams like this it has always taken her a long time to wake up.

  Maria woke to hear her mother’s voice behind the door, as she had each morning since her incarceration. She had almost lost count of the days. It was a splendid year; the sun shone continuously and corn and tomatoes were ripening faster than they could be gathered. The people shook their heads and spoke of an Indian summer, and how it looked like there would be no winter at all, the rate they were going.

  From her room, Maria watched the blue sky through the bars that Hector McIssac had placed over her window.

  She did not scan the ground below, as those beyond the room might have expected, waiting for her lover to appear. She supposed, now, that she would never know what had become of him. This mattered to her, because he was someone who had been prepared to take risks for her. Too late she had realised that she didn’t care.

  In the end it was she who had taken the greater risk. Though they had turned over his hut, they would not touch him. Now he was gone and she did not expect to see him again. What mattered was the passage of this month. Then, maybe, she would be allowed to live her life unhindered again. And sooner or later she would go away, however painful and difficult that might prove.

  Her term in the room must almost be over. She had counted four Sundays, days when a door banged, a carriage called, and the house had gone quiet as her mother went to church. Even now, she would keep up appearances. She could see Annie walking up the aisle with her head held high beside her brother and his wife, taking her seat in the usual pew, following the prayers for the faithful, and walking out again with a ‘good morning’ here and there.

  In that way, Maria guessed, she would leave a path which her daughter might follow after a suitable time had passed.

  And now the fourth Monday morning. She had woken earlier than usual, for lately she had had great trouble waking up. At first she thought her mother was speaking to her, but Annie was talking to someone downstairs. A man’s voice, just after dawn. Maria listened. It was Hector. Now his voice grew indistinct. She was not certain whether he was still in the house or had gone outside.

  ‘Maria,’ called Annie.

  An exchange took place between them each morning; Annie would pass food to her and in exchange Maria had passed out the chamber pot. She had considered the idea of escape, but by now she knew that Hector or one of the boys lurked nearby for most of the time. It was between her and her mother, she had concluded, and nothing was to be gained, no dignity or power for her cause, from ill-considered breakouts. She would see it through, pursuing her own plan. As the days passed she stitched her clothes and put her wardrobe in order. When the time came to leave, she would be prepared. At least this was what she told herself, although some days she was so sleepy that she would nod off over her needlework.

  Although she had been expecting a change in her routine, now that it had come she was unprepared for it. Something more than she had expected was afoot.

  ‘What is it, mother?’

  The door swung open and Annie stood there, dressed in the black mourning clothes she had worn when Isabella died. She made no effort to stop Maria walking past her.

  ‘So where is my bodyguard, my precious uncle? Aren’t you afraid I’ll escape?’

  ‘I wish you would. I wish I had never set eyes on you.’ Her mother’s voice sounded like mud sliding along a riverbank, full of disaster.

  ‘Mother, when will this ever end?’ asked Maria. ‘What’s happened is over. I’ve sat here, and sewed, and made no complaint to you. I’ve accepted your will. What is it now?’

  ‘A month. A whole month you’ve sat in there. Yes.’

  ‘It was a month you suggested. I can’t stay in there forever. Can I?’

  ‘Come out here to the kitchen, I have something to say to you. Your uncle is waiting.’

  ‘Can I not speak to my own mother without that man listening to us? Mother, this is crazy.’

  Yet she followed her. She saw the room as it always was, except that this morning there was no fire burning and it was cold. An unusual and early frost lay outside on the grass. Through the window she could see again the garden she and Annie had planted. She felt as if she had crossed from one world into another, rather than from one room into the next.

  Her uncle stood by the window, looking out with his hands folded over each other behind his back. He did not turn when she entered the room.

  ‘Good morning, uncle,’ she said although she would have preferred not to speak to him.

  ‘A month, Maria,’ said Annie again, in the same dead heavy voice.

  ‘I do not understand this at all. What are you trying to say to me?’ Maria searched first her mother’s putty-coloured face, and next her uncle’s unrelenting back.

  I did not know when I sent you there …’ Annie faltered. ‘It did not occur to me at first. A thought so dreadful that even as the weeks passed it seemed impossible … Do you know what that month means, Maria?’

  ‘A week, a month, it could be a year, mother. Time’s lost its meaning. Perhaps you’ve destroyed time.’

  ‘There was no bleeding in that room, Maria.’

  Silence then, and the unlikely frost outside. Her bare feet, cold on the floor.

  ‘Did you hear what I said? No blood.’

  ‘I heard.’

  ‘No bleeding at all.’

  ‘Would you have me cut my veins then?’ whispered Maria. ‘I’ve felt like it.’


  She was playing for time, avoiding the moment when she would have to tell herself that it was true, that some half-known secret about the life of women would become hers.

  ‘You are with child, Maria McClure,’ said Black Hector, from where he stood at the window.

  Their faces, both of them, then the whole procession swimming before her, of people who lived good lives and did not toy with fortune, with straight mouths and eyes like the frost. Outside.

  twenty-one

  I’m watching you, little bird. Wild ones are good to each other, hush come quietly, little sparrow.’

  Kenneth Falconer had said, ‘For all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flowers of the grass.’

  The bird looks stiff and sore, as if it had been beaten, which indeed it has.

  Maria observes it, hardly breathing lest she startle it, imagines the tiny web of veins like threads in its wings, visualises the miniature structure of its body as complex as that of a human heart, muscles like fine shells pumping minute quantities of blood, the brain no larger than grains, its response to the world as finely tuned as her own.

  ‘In the morning we will find a way out of here for you.’ Her voice becomes uncertain. ‘Perhaps, perhaps.’

  And after a while, ‘Or perhaps you would like to stay here with me. Well, now there’s a thought. Hah. How foolish that would be. No, let’s get you better, stay here another night, yes? And in the morning you’ll be restored, it’s nothing more than bruising, I can tell that, nothing broken, and when you’ve had a rest you can hop along to the open window and set off again. That’s what I would do if I were you. I think. Yes, I think so, though it’s hard to remember, wouldn’t you say. Ah, bird.’

  She closes her eyes.

  ‘The grass withereth and the flowers thereof fall away,’ says Kenneth Falconer’s voice from across the years.