The Book of Secrets

by Fiona Kidman

  As if in a trance, she followed him up the stairs. When she was in bed, beside him again, she said, ‘You will go, won’t you?’

  Wearily, he replied that he would.

  They did not sleep for the rest of the night, but lay talking. They talked of love and kissed each other a great deal. Afterwards, she would think that there were things she could have asked him about the world beyond. When he left she would know little more than when he came, but as she lay beside him it seemed unimportant; there would never be time for this again. There would be no more lovers.

  ‘Tell me about the old people again,’ he said once during the night, thinking of what he had read.

  So she lay on her back, a little apart from him, and told him of the dark abysses under the Nova Scotia ice, where a person might fall and never be seen again, especially if they ventured forth upon it when the spring thaw was coming; and about the way the moss smelled, coming up for air when the melting was finally over. She spoke of the wild strawberries that grew there in summer, and the sweet maple syrup that was collected under the trees; the way the rocks were worn smooth by the sea, and the way it was a harsh land, but beautiful too. Then she recited the names of the ships again, and the families that had travelled on them, and it was as if she had been there herself.

  ‘It will be lost,’ he said, ‘in time it will all be lost,’ and his voice was full of desolation.

  Around four in the morning he held her closely for the last time.

  ‘Will you be safe?’ he asked.

  ‘As safe as I’ve ever been.’

  The last thing she asked him before he left was what he had decided to do about the war. It was a subject which had not been raised again since the beginning.

  ‘I’m not going to war,’ he said. ‘They’ll have to take me there by force.’

  The stars going out were as she imagined snowflakes when they were falling and melting before they touched the ground.

  ‘That is the bravest decision,’ she said. ‘That is what courage is about.’

  Which was more than she thought she would ever regain when he slipped out of bed and pulled on his clothes. She wanted to go to the door with him, but he asked her to stay in the bed, not to leave it until he had gone. At the door, he looked at her once more. ‘You must always sleep in that bed,’ he said. ‘It’s more comfortable … Besides, you are in charge here now.’

  As if he knew how the other women had occupied the shadows in the room.

  When she heard the creak of the back door she got out of bed and went to the window to watch his shadow flicker against the macrocarpa tree, then dart towards the river. Long after, she would think that that was her mistake, not to have done just as he asked. For her own shadow had loomed against the window.

  Now the dawn had broken and what she feared might happen to her was true. She could hear voices no longer, and calling to her daughter, there was no reply.

  Outside, in the raw thin light, the grass smelled faintly astringent under the cool dew. The japonica flowers shone like blood. She stripped off all her clothes, shivering violently as she lay down on the wet grass, tearing up handfuls of it and washing her body, her breasts and between her legs.

  Back inside the house, she went up the narrow stairs to the bed and lay down. She had taken her necklace from the dresser of the old room as she passed through it, but now as she clutched it she was uncertain of its power. Her belly was full of pain and she knew that she was about to bleed.

  For a week she lay there, barely moving, and when her foremothers spoke she did not answer them. All she heard was a new, quietly insistent voice asking her over and over again, ‘What have you done to Jamie, your cousin?’ And another would respond, ‘What has she done to her cousin, who is also her brother’s child?’

  She turned her face to the wall, ‘I don’t want to hear you, it doesn’t have to be true,’ she said aloud.

  And asked herself again, and a hundred times, why she had shown him the journal.

  twenty-four

  Maria lay on the feather mattress throughout a week of fog and indifferent weather. The mists cleared at last and the sun shone again. She got up then and cleared the room of all traces of its joint possession, making up the bed with clean sheets and putting a clean nightdress under the pillow. Outside it was truly spring. Her plum tree was flowering and the cow waited with swollen udders at the gate.

  When she had fresh milk, she separated the cream to make butter, and set loaves of bread. In the evening she made up the fire and took up her knitting again, threading grey wool on her needles to knit a man’s jersey.

  One morning late in the summer that followed she was tying back tomatoes at the back of the house. She could not decide what to do with all the fruit; the vine was breaking with its weight and the skins splitting in the sun as they ripened before her eyes.

  She did not hear William’s approach. It was several months since she had last seen him and when she looked up and saw him standing beside her, the air seemed very still, only the shrill cicadas reminding her of life about them.

  A ra ra te ki-te ki-te, they cried, across the hot quiet day, a ra ra te ki-te.

  William’s gaze was unfriendly, his eyes bitter and narrow as he stood beside her.

  ‘Well?’ she said. She could barely restrain her glance, raking his face for traces of Jamie. There was little she recognised, and yet there was about him what in other circumstances might have been a comfortable warmth. He was a big solid man, with creases deeply folded down his cheeks and under his chin. His hands were blunt and worn.

  ‘His ship was sunk at sea.’

  The back of her hand flew to her mouth as she stifled a small sharp cry.

  ‘So it does move you?’

  ‘He is lost?’ Then she tried to recover herself, although on reflection she could not see that it made much difference. The whole scene had a slow inevitability about it, as if it had all been played before. ‘If you mean your son, he called here once,’ she said, taking up the twine again to tie up another vine.

  ‘You sheltered him.’

  ‘If that’s what you think.’

  ‘I know. I know what you did, Maria McClure.’

  Her fingers felt numb. She pulled the knot too tight and the string bit through the stem of the vine, so that the upper half of it toppled over. Why am I doing this, she wondered. A caterpillar crawled lazily along the leaf, arching its back in ripples that reached from end to end. She flicked it to the ground with her thumb and forefinger and its green innards exploded in a small pulpy heap.

  ‘So you sent him to war,’ she said.

  ‘Aye, we did.’

  She looked him up and down then with what she hoped he would read as contempt. Yet what she saw did not really stir contempt in her, only a deep pity which for the moment must take the place of grief. A sort of cousin, a kind of brother. Who else knew? Or would she carry the secrets to her own grave? She scanned him covertly as she knelt to collect up a handful of tendrils that were escaping her trellis. His eyes were the colour of Black Doris plums with the same opaqueness extending over the pupils. A thicket of black hairs grew in his nose and ears. She might have liked this stranger. What friends they could have been! But instead, they were talking about Jamie.

  She straightened up and put her scissors in her pocket. ‘I might have known you would catch him. It made me ill at the time, thinking of you baiting traps, as if he was a rat instead of a man. Your own son. Dead eh? You must be proud.’

  His face collapsed inwards. ‘You think I wanted him dead? Listen to me, witch, the boat that he would have sailed on, except for your meddling, arrived at its destination safe and sound. You are the guilty one.’

  ‘I see. So that is what you’ve really come to tell me.’ She dug both hands in the pocket of her apron so that he would not see them shaking.

  Above their heads swam the relentless sun, and a flock of gulls wheeling towards the sea. The centre from one of her sunflowers suddenly fell, a pile
of brown seeds scattering, covering the earth below. Everything is collapsing and dying, things so ripe and pretty and deathly, she thought.

  ‘You have other sons,’ she commented, knowing this was so.

  His mouth hardened so much it all but disappeared. ‘They have gone to take his place. There is no one left on the farm but me,’ he answered.

  He took three or four steps down the path, stopped and turned back. ‘My father knew you for a murdering woman. It is not true, I said to him, you are too hard on her. But he was not hard enough. They burned people like you at the stake once, and even that would be too good for you.’

  She raised her eyes to his, but he shrank as if her gaze might have some evil effect. ‘You’ve got no remorse, have you? You do not care. The third killing, Maria McClure.’

  He walked away. A ra a ra te ki-te ki-te. The air was fretful with the insects’ clamour and an approaching summer storm.

  My brother. More or less. She was sure it should have mattered more. After this war abroad they would never be the same. McLeod had called upon them to take care of each other, to keep out the world’s madness; he could not prevent what happened inside.

  I am what happens when people get lost. It seems that I cannot make new paths. I have tried that, and failed. But I am a reminder. A conscience, perhaps? What kind of fate is that?

  In the morning she thinks she hears another stone. She believes it is the next morning, though suddenly, after all these years, she is really losing track of time. The night is without shape, she cannot remember what has taken place. The house is very cold, and she realises that there are holes downstairs letting in the wind. Yes, it is so very cold. Though the wind is not as high as she expected, as if the storm had veered away to the south, missing Waipu.

  But the air is keen as if there is a frost outside. The bird is still on its perch, its feathers ruffled. Perhaps it has had enough too?

  Painfully she gets out of bed, talking aloud to the bird. It does not budge, but opens one eye, bright still but bad-tempered.

  Her voice is doubtful.

  ‘Perhaps you should stay there after all. I don’t know what to do with you. It’s no good staying here.’

  The sparrow does not move. She sighs.

  ‘I’ll feed you though. You know that?’

  Her hands feel clumsy as she crumbles a piece of bread from the tray beside her. She throws the crumbs into the middle of the floor, half expecting the bird to refuse.

  But it stretches its wings, turns its head from side to side, then flies down to the bread. It thrusts its head backwards and forwards at her with rapid darting motions, as if inviting a dispute.

  ‘It’ll do you no good,’ she says. ‘Sooner or later, you have to take a chance again.’

  twenty-five

  A man arrived at Maria’s door towards dusk on a winter afternoon. It had been a bright day, cloudless and sunlit in spite of the season. The first stars were appearing like pin-points against the hollow shining sky. The grass glittered with a hint of frost.

  The man was elderly, dressed in baggy trousers tied with twine at the waist and ankles. Around his shoulders he wore a cloak made of sacking.

  ‘You must come, Miss,’ he said, gesturing across the paddocks.

  She shrank back into the shadow beside her door.

  ‘Come where? I can’t come anywhere.’

  ‘You must.’ Behind his stubble of beard, the man’s race was indeterminate, but she could see that his features were very dark. He held his hat in his hand, turning it over anxiously. It was so threadbare and worn that the brim seemed about to part from the crown. His bald head shone like polished kauri wood. Trying to summon up some explanation for his appeal he stammered and had difficulty with his words. She saw then that he was shaking. She was not sure whether it was from fear or illness.

  ‘Come in,’ she said, opening the door wider. At least this one would not be staying a month. He took an anguished look over his shoulder, as if he were seeing the light for the last time, and stepped over her doorstep. The kettle was boiling. She emptied it into the teapot. It is my answer to everything, she thought. But at least the sight of such ordinary activity, and the offer it implied, calmed the man. He started to speak again, his teeth, where there were any, were almost worn to his shrivelled gums.

  ‘We have the ’flu with us,’ he said, and suddenly she recognised his accent.

  ‘You are Dalmatian?’

  He nodded. ‘A Dally, yes.’

  For an incredulous moment she looked at him, but it was not Branco. What am I thinking of, she asked herself, this is a really old man, and the man I am remembering would only be a little older than I am. She handed him a cup which he took and drank thirstily.

  ‘We have the ’flu,’ he said again.

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘The epidemic. The plague. It is here.’

  She shook her head. Despite his agitation, the man appeared to believe that he had told her all that was needed.

  ‘A sickness? Yes?’

  He mustered himself with a considerable effort. Clearly he had decided she was simple, and he was no longer afraid of her. As he leaned forward, earnestly trying to make her understand, his cloak fell forward and she saw that he wore an odd little bag around his neck. She noticed a pungent odour, much more refreshing than his appearance suggested. Now he fingered the bag.

  ‘It is the camphor bag we have been given. It is to keep away the sickness. Many people ill. The sickness, some say, come off ships, some say it is for God, for wars.’

  ‘What do you think?’

  He shook his head violently. ‘I don’t know, I don’t know. I am Milan, very old man. I know nothing. Only that people are dying, and my son and his missus, they are dying in the cottage and no one will come to them.’

  ‘No one? That’s not like Waipu. They take care of each other.’ For in spite of her circumstances, she knew this to be true. Nobody need perish untended, if they asked for help.

  He shook his head again. ‘Mebbe, mebbe they come, Miss. But me, Milan, I do not know who to ask. I thought, mebbe, Miss, that you come to help them.’

  ‘I would not know what to do. I know nothing of this illness.’

  ‘Very hot. Great fever. All over the country, people, pakehas, Maori, my own people, they all die. There is no time to bury the dead and nobody want to bury them … Except …’ He stopped, and gave her a crafty look.

  ‘Except what?’

  ‘Eh? Oh I tell you, Miss,’ and she knew he was changing his tack, ‘the heat so great people jump into the river to cool off and then they sicker than before. My daughter by marriage is so sick and I have to hold her, stop this mad jump into the river. My son, I think he will die, and I cannot stop her jump on my own. I come here while she sleeps a little.’

  Maria’s head was spinning. She stood with her hand on the bannister of her steep staircase, considering what to do. She could still take flight to her room upstairs and barricade herself in until Milan went away. That was what she would like. It would be safer up there. The world could not get to her unless they came and burned down the house and smoked her out.

  And why her? Did he know something about her which she imagined forgotten by now? Out there, who would still remember that the witch had once lain in the fields with a man who was not her countryman. Perhaps he knew; it was just possible.

  By the fire the old man hunched himself forward. He turned his face towards her and she could see that he was ill too. So that was why he had come; the son and his wife would soon have no one to tend them at all, and he must find someone to replace him as their guardian as quickly as he could. She guessed it was already too late to protect herself from what lay outside, and that the fatal touch of illness had entered her house as quickly as she had learned of its existence. But she was reassured to know that his need was desperate and real, and not contrived around some aspect of her past.

  His whole skull was shining, waxen-skinned in the light,
and his eyes had receded into his head. He spoke with tremendous effort. ‘What if she takes the bubba in the river with her?’

  ‘There is a child?’

  ‘Yes.’ He looked as if he might topple forward on her hearth.

  ‘I’ll get my cloak.’ She took it from its peg behind the door. ‘Come now, you must tell me where I’ll find these people.’

  ‘You won’t find them, it is too hard.’ His breath came in short panting gasps as he staggered to his feet.

  ‘You’re too ill for this. I know these parts. It is near the river? Yes. In trees? Near the sea?’

  ‘Not far. Among trees. Near the river.’

  ‘I’ll find it.’

  ‘Promise you will go to them?’

  ‘I give you my word. Now stay by the fire, keep warm.’

  She was casting round in her head trying to think how to equip herself to deal with a dying family. She collected two blankets from the cupboard under the stairs and a towel, filled the billy with tea, and with a last despairing look around her, set forth towards the unknown.

  When she walked out of sight of her house, little appeared to have changed. In the half-light every blade of grass and every tree, every stump from the old fires which had swept the land, every clump of toi-toi looked the same. Some things were larger, perhaps, and by the river the small wild rose was now slung in tangles over many bushes and the hawthorns loomed taller than her, spiked and glowing with berries. She came upon a lemon tree laden with winter fruit and marvelled that such bounty lay so close to her without her knowing it. From down river the sound of bagpipes wafted but she could not see from where the sound came. Her heart turned over. She had told herself many times that the silences in her head were amply filled by birdsong and the wind in the trees, but hearing this nearly forgotten sound reminded her that she missed many things.

  For a moment she was tempted to keep on walking towards the bagpipes. She could get help for the stricken family, and when she had done that she would board a coastal steamer and sail away to Auckland, just as she had once planned when she was a girl. At the time of Branco.