The Book of Secrets

by Fiona Kidman

  Isabella, forgive me this omission. I was afraid to meddle. Now I am afraid to die without telling you.

  Yours affectionately, Martha.

  With this letter were several returned unopened from Isabella. The last was marked deceased.

  Down below, the voices of Hoana and her family and friends were quieter, subdued as if they were waiting.

  She turned over Christie’s papers in her hands. It was of no consequence, whatever was there would make no difference. Or there might be no clue at all, the traces of the past having vanished already. She must go down.

  But still she could not, because of the voices: her grandmother’s, her mother’s, the child she had had and lost. And now you are to lose this one, and you will never know if you do not take the chance to find out. She put her hands over her ears and opened the papers.

  In the garden she handed over the bag to Hoana.

  ‘There’s not as much as I thought,’ she said. ‘Here are some of the pounds back again.’ She handed Hoana three of the notes.

  Hoana looked disturbed. She understood that she would not be able to pay her dues this lightly.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said. Her voice was serious, as she put the money away in her pocket. ‘You have the papers?’

  Maria nodded. At that moment, Christie came bounding back to them. ‘Maria, that’s Nanny, and that’s Auntie Ripeka, and Auntie Hine. What’s an auntie, Maria?’

  ‘You will have to ask your mother that,’ said Maria. ‘I think she can explain better than I can.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I never had an auntie,’ said Maria, ‘and now I think you’re going to have a great many. That’s something worth having. It’s family, Christie.’

  As she spoke, she handed Hoana the papers. Hoana flicked her eyes over them ensuring that they were all there. Nodding, she sought a pocket large enough to contain them all. Maria knew that this was the moment. If she chose, she could bind Hoana and Christie and herself forever. If she chose.

  Behind Hoana, the women rustled against the grass, dark, already drawing away. She could not see them moving, but she could feel it, as if they were being sucked away in the air.

  ‘Well, if that is all,’ she said.

  ‘We’re going now, Christie,’ said Hoana. ‘Say goodbye.’

  For a moment Christie was poised towards her, her arms outstretched. Maria leaned and kissed her dryly on the cheek.

  ‘Be good for your mother,’ she said. The child drew back, bewildered, but before she had time to think about this rebuff an aunt had gathered her up.

  ‘Thank you, then,’ said Hoana.

  Under her breath, Maria said. ‘She must sleep with someone. She’ll be lonely otherwise.’ Only she couldn’t be sure whether Hoana heard. Probably they would know this anyway, it was not for her to tell them.

  She went inside before they were out of sight. It felt as if she hadn’t slept for weeks. In her hand were two pound notes. Such pretence. As if Hoana had not known. What would she do with the money? She had never had money of her own, more than a few coins. Not that she could remember. Or had her Uncle Hector given her a sovereign once, when she was a child? She was too tired to think, and it didn’t seem important. She put the money in the fire and watched it burn.

  As she might have put the handful of papers that she had clung to all these years into the flames. Only they made a kind of sense. They added up to something. When they were matched and fitted together they made a whole. Completed a pattern, like knitting. Like Christie. It had been no surprise to Maria to find on the birth certificate Hoana’s maiden name, linked back to the name MacQuarrie.

  For hadn’t she known it, from the moment when she first saw her walk across the earthen floor of the cottage?

  Blood, that’s what it was.

  Running together, and through them.

  But not even blood could hold people. You had to wait for them to come back.

  And she had come at last to the end, the final entry.

  ‘It is time to give up thinking of this other one. I am not even sure he existed. He may simply have been the figment of a sick woman’s imagination.

  ‘I am tired of journals. There are enough secrets here to last several lifetimes. They are not, in themselves, secrets that will change the world, but they can make a world of difference. So there is nothing more to say. The event I hoped for has occurred, and what is left of my time I will spend with this girl, Maria.’

  But grandmother, what of me now, now that you have run out on me?

  Oh … you will just have to wait as best you can.

  Yes. Yes, that is what I thought. You and mother, you were two of a kind after all.

  It has taken you a long time to find that out, hasn’t it?

  You mean, I couldn’t have done without either of you?

  Well, what do you think?

  So now I wait?

  If that’s what you think you should do.

  Until she comes back? Yes, yes, I see. That’s how it is. All right, I’ll wait.

  twenty-six

  Stella, wife of Neil McIssac, was drinking tea in Maria’s front room. She wore a loose jacket over a draped skirt that came only as far as her knee. On her head she wore a cloche hat and around her neck hung a long string of pearls. Maria could not take her eyes off these clothes. They were as strange as the machines that she saw lumbering past her door these days. At the gate stood Stella’s own car, a gleaming new 1928 Ford.

  Stella was a bright bird-like woman, anxious to please. ‘Such pretty cups,’ she enthused, holding up the china to the light.

  ‘Thank you. Father bought them for mother. After a good season, I believe.’

  How polite she sounded! But she could not think what to say next, although every time there was a pause Stella filled it, as if she had rehearsed for this possibility.

  This time the silence swelled around them. The other woman put her cup down carefully on the table and drew a deep breath.

  ‘Maria, we were wondering, Neil and I, if you would care to come to dinner with us next week.’

  She sat bolt upright. The visit, which had been forced upon her, was one thing. Neil had shown consideration for her when others had not and if his wife felt impelled towards a charitable gesture, she supposed she must allow it. But this was too much.

  She looked down at her own clothes, her rough hands, and at Stella’s clothes again. ‘I think I’m a little out of touch with polite living.’

  ‘But Maria, we can’t let you stay like this forever.’

  Her eyes glanced around the room. Maria was aware of its worn appearance, the frayed curtain, the peeling varnish, the patches of ancient newspaper which had even crept down to where they sat as the wind had opened up more cracks. Her supply was nearly exhausted. Soon the wind would enter, or she would have to plaster the holes with dirt. At least her brass shone brightly, and with satisfaction she noted that there was not a speck of dust in sight.

  ‘You can’t really stop me, can you?’ said Maria mildly, although a small panicky voice in her head asked if the house could have been disposed of without her knowing.

  ‘No — o,’ said Stella, ‘of course not.’

  She sighed with relief then, almost missing Stella’s next remark.

  ‘But we do feel that perhaps you have been treated unfairly. By history.’ She smiled sweetly.

  ‘We? Who is we? You and Neil?’

  ‘Not just us, my dear. People we speak to. They would like you to come out of here.’

  ‘I worry people?’

  ‘They worry about you.’

  Maria almost laughed out loud. ‘No Stella, no. I worry them. That is different.’

  Her visitor looked uncomfortable.

  ‘It’s very kind of you,’ said Maria, getting to her feet. ‘But thank you, no. I don’t want to come to dinner. I don’t want to leave this place.’

  ‘Aren’t you lonely? Since the little girl left?’

  Maria gripped the
back of a chair. She must not show this woman how she felt. Or whether she felt at all. To show her would be to remind herself of more than she cared to remember. As with the walls, the cracks were sealed over.

  And so she concentrated on remaining calm, but she felt the floor slipping away from her. Her face flushed and an intolerable wave of heat swept over her. For a moment she thought she would fall.

  Stella was looking at her with lively interest. ‘Oh dear, it’s the change,’ she said. ‘Such a nuisance, isn’t it? We all get through it somehow or another. Look, are you sure about dinner …?’

  Maria felt herself return. ‘Quite sure.’

  ‘We do feel you should, that it would be fair to us.’ She cast around for inspiration. That you owe us, she might have said. The unspoken utterance hung between them.

  ‘Because someone pays? I thought there was a provision made for me. Has it run out?’

  ‘No. No, truly, Maria dear, that is not what I meant. That is taken care of. You are our relative. You hide yourself from us.’

  ‘It is they,’ Maria said, ‘who owe me my privacy. Never let them stop paying.’ Stella stared, blinking with incomprehension. ‘You have said that history has treated me unfairly. Let them live with the history that they’ve made. It’s true, I’m part of it. McLeod’s history.’

  ‘You’re too hard on the old people.’

  ‘No, Stella. I am not hard. They are hard on themselves. I understand courage, truthfulness to a vision, the will to survive. Uprightness, care for the weak and the sick, these I understand as well as most people. But I have never understood what it means to worship a god who dictated with absolute authority one point of view and word, who dealt rough justice without consideration of the evidence, or a god who maintained the superiority of men over women.’

  ‘Maria, those are dreadful things to say!’

  ‘Why? Do you accept them?’

  ‘I — I don’t really know.’ Stella touched her dress uncertainly. ‘I’ve been more fortunate than some,’ she admitted. ‘In some ways, Maria. But I never had children, you know.’

  Her eyes were misty blue. They watered for a moment and she blinked, then was overcome with embarrassment as she remembered Maria’s circumstances.

  ‘What of William’s children?’ asked Maria, both to ease the situation and because she really did want to know. Stella’s eyes widened now, so that she forgot her own discomfort. Maria could still surprise her.

  ‘You never heard? None of them came back from the war.’

  Maria nodded. ‘I thought as much.’

  ‘He must have told you?’

  ‘We hardly know each other.’ Maria hesitated. ‘You’ve been kind, Stella. But I wonder who really sent you.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Perhaps it’s you who hasn’t been told everything.’

  ‘I know what they say about you.’

  ‘But you thought it might not be true? Nobody could be so monstrous, eh?’

  ‘You’re not monstrous. And we saw what you did for the child. That was very Christian.’

  Maria tried not to wince and smiled instead.

  ‘Stella. Look around you. The old community doesn’t hold up. Times have changed.’

  ‘How can you say that?’ Stella cried, stung. ‘When you know nothing about it?’

  ‘Believe me, I know more than you think. They will come to look on their history with new eyes. The good and the bad. I have heard of the monument that stands in the village. I’ve heard pipes playing across the river, and laughter at night when the air is still. New gaiety. New purpose, perhaps. Stella, look at you. You wouldn’t turn back and you’ll be glad when you leave here that you are not me. But I’ll tell you a secret, cousin. At last I am glad to be myself. You see, I never intend to leave here. I’ll stay here till I die.’

  Stella was deeply shocked. ‘You can’t mean that,’ she murmured, but she suspected that Maria did.

  ‘I can. That is my wish. I have thought many times of leaving but it’s not important to me any more. There is no reason why it should be important to anyone else — unless, just now and then, those who look this way catch a reflection in themselves of the things they most fear.’

  Flustered, Stella asked, ‘Shall I call again?’

  Maria paused, surprised that she had to think about it. In spite of herself, she liked the busy little woman. She might be a trifle stupid, but she appeared to be without malice and it had cost her an effort to come. Then a vision arose of successions of good women, perhaps less agreeable than this one, pouncing on her and trying to persuade her back into the fold.

  ‘I would be grateful if you did not come again,’ Maria said. ‘I have a great deal more to think about, you see.’

  And all eternity in which to think of it, little bird. My dreams of flight, well, there had to be an end to them sooner or later, wouldn’t you say? Facing the reality. But they were so delicious while they lasted. One gains through equanimity but there is also loss; the levelling of perception is like losing a sense. Like taste, perhaps, though the appreciation of pain is not so fine. It is replaced by a dull unsatisfied ache which the dream, abandoned, cannot remedy.

  Oh, it is different for you. You have the power of flight, you must fly again, you can’t stay here with me, however much I should like the company … and I did want for company. Not Stella or her friends, but stubbornly holding out for the one who never came …

  In a year when the grass was so dry it appeared to be white, and stood out stalk by stalk on the cracked earth, when the cows near the fenceline hung their heads with their mouths open and their purple tongues were swollen with thirst, a van pulled up outside Maria’s house.

  A cheerful sign painted in curling letters on the side proclaimed it the property of the W. T. Rawleigh Co Ltd.

  Ben Harrison had driven past this old house several times in his four-times-a-year coverage of his territory. He knew each dwelling, the catch on each gate, come to think of it; he knew the gates themselves, whether they swung open easily at the touch or sagged in the middle, or if you had to nurse them carefully over the ground so that the broken slats did not collapse altogether. Gates were a science in themselves, part of the job. Handling a gate was half the game when it came to getting through a door; you had to enter one before you made it past the second post. But then you made every post a winning post. Ben Harrison was something of a racing man and that came in handy on the job too, pick up a tip here, give a little there, surprising what you got to hear on your rounds. He knew that once you were through that door, and you had your black sample case open with its beautiful tight compartments containing all the little phials of medicine, the bottles and the tins, the essences and the spices, the Ready Relief for colds and the liniment, the Pleasant Relief for stomach aches, and the Ru-me-xol made from hoarhound root for comforting rheumatics, that it was simply a matter of reading form. And the message he’d got about Maria McClure was, don’t bother. You’d never get anything out of the witch.

  So that her gate presented something of a challenge. But nothing tried, nothing gained, Ben always said, and it hadn’t been much of a day. He was so parched he was buggered if he was going any further until he had a drink in him, and maybe the old girl might come across for a bit of ointment or something. You couldn’t tell him that at her age she didn’t get the odd thing wrong with her. Not that he knew how old she was, but pretty old, they said. Been there forever. Well forty years maybe, since she took to living on her own. Who knew for sure? She was the witch; you didn’t count witch years like other folk’s.

  He thought there was no one there when he tried the door. The silence was tangible when he knocked. He could hear himself breathing and was surprised the way his heart raced. He was not the kind of chap to get frightened by all the creepy stories they fed you, fairy-tale stuff.

  He pushed the door and it swung open before his hand, causing him to jump back as if he’d been taken by the throat. The woman was sitting in th
e half-light watching the door, as if expecting someone, or something, to come through it. She was quite still and she said nothing to relieve him of his fright. Just sat looking and watching.

  ‘I was hoping for a drink, missus,’ he said. It occurred to him that he had no idea whether she had ever been a married woman or not.

  ‘Of course,’ she said, getting to her feet, her long skirt sweeping the floor. Like a bleeding duchess, as he said afterwards when he was retelling the visit. Wallis Simpson didn’t have nothing on her.

  When he was sitting at the board table, scrupulously clean he noted, sipping the old woman’s scalding tea and wishing it were a cold pint, he opened his case. He opened it slowly and casually, as if checking it out for his own benefit. Her eyes followed his hands.

  ‘Ever tried our famous liniment?’ asked Ben Harrison.

  She shook her head.

  ‘Take half a teaspoon in a tumbler of milk, it’s like a drop of whisky. I tell you, I take it myself.’

  ‘You do?’

  ‘Keeps me ticking over,’ he said proudly. ‘Look at me, I never have a day’s illness.’ He was a plain, sandy-coloured man, but large and well built, and there was no doubt that he looked strong. ‘Man or beast, you can take our products inside and out.’

  ‘Really?’

  He guessed she was passing time, like women in these out-of-the-way places sometimes did when he called, especially if they were short of money; yet there was a breathless, fascinated air about her exclamations that made him want to boast a little more.

  ‘I sold some of that to Mrs Munroe last time I came round. She said it done her a power of good, her nerves were shot to pieces. You know Mrs Munroe?’

  ‘I’m not sure I do. Was that the Munro that went into Parliament?’

  ‘Eh? I don’t know about that, ma’am,’ he said, thinking this is a more appropriate way to address her.