Mrs. M

by Luke Slattery

  EPIGRAPHS

  For we are, all of us, small men.

  But in this new world we may become giants.

  Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels

  There’s an old story … which may or may not be true.

  Euripides, Helen

  CONTENTS

  Epigraphs

  Part One Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Part Two Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Part Three Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Postscript

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Copyright

  PART ONE

  CHAPTER ONE

  I paid the boatman with a bag of fresh cherries this morning. I picked them myself from the sloping orchard beside Loch Bà. I need not give at all. He knows. Knows that I am married — was married — to Macquarie of Mull; that since his death last year there has been nothing from the crofters, not that there is ever very much.

  The English butler left on Boxing Day with a tight smile and a portmanteau of suspicious heft and now there is just me and the young footman. The rascal drinks away every spare shilling and returns with an awful clatter each night to the cold house at Gruline lying deep in the shadow of Ben More. I am very near done with him.

  The island of Mull is large and muscular, not entirely beautiful, though not easily forgotten, and the islanders clannishly tight when they are not at one another’s throats. They have all heard of our journey to Sydney Cove, so full of promise, and the calamity — at the very least the indignity — suffered there. They shook their heads at the journey out; doubtless they shook them again at news of our return and our ruin. They must think me cursed.

  And yet I am born too high for their sympathy and their eyes cannot meet mine for long. The women turn away, or lower their gaze, as if I have suddenly become disfigured, which manifestly I have not because the men — the married men mostly — offer a dark, direct look: testing and very bold.

  Not the boatman, who is to row me the short distance across the Sound to the little island of Ulva, my husband’s birthplace. He is at peace with whatever it is that I am, or have done, or have endured. He takes the milk-white cotton satchel plumped with cherries — a few crimson stains mark the underside where the split and wounded fruit have pressed. Stepping stooped and splay-legged to the head of the rocking rowboat, he tucks it under the gunwale and returns for me. Taking my hand, he leads me to the varnished bench opposite his own. He bends to take the oars, straightens as he pulls.

  ‘Apologies,’ I am about to say. ‘There is no coin about the house.’ But the words dissolve under his mild gaze.

  Instead it is the boatman who speaks: ‘It’d be two hundred yards across. Not far enough from one shore to the other to raise a sweat, even on the warmest days.’

  A crumpled grin spreads across his unshaven outdoor face as he tugs on the oars. ‘If I’m delayed for any reason — the nets, the crab pots, visitors to the boathouse — you need only whistle for Ben and he’ll take you on his back,’ he says. The smile broadens.

  ‘I would think the old labrador might take some convincing,’ I return. ‘He enjoys the sun — when there is sun.’

  ‘Aye, he does.’

  A glass of port wine with this man at the Ulva boathouse, a wedge of cheddar shared between us, a few slices of warm bread, and these splendid cherries taken into the mouth one by one — the unyielding fruit tasteless before the crack of the flesh and the burst of juice. What bright conversation there would be!

  ‘I am grateful,’ I offer. ‘I will be finished by mid-afternoon.’

  A final heave and we nudge the Ulva pier with a sweet hollow knock, quite musical. He tethers the boat to the bollard. Again, he takes my hand in his.

  I join him on the pier. He pulls a weathered old parasol from beneath his arm, gives it a shake and opens it for me as we walk past the crab pots and the mounds of seaweed drying in the sun.

  ‘The kelp burning season,’ he says apologetically. ‘The wife,’ he shoots a glance at the boathouse to the right on the low rise, ‘she calls it the scent of summer.’

  ‘You must,’ I say firmly, ‘return the sunshade to her.’ I extract a light bonnet from my pocket.

  ‘It is kind of you ma’am. She will need it for the journey.’

  ‘What journey?’

  ‘No matter,’ he says and looks away.

  The boatman’s hair is drawn back from his broad brow and worn at an unfashionable length. Age has him in its grasp. And yet the grey — a full head of it — is no dull absence of colour but a bright weave of charcoal, steel and mica. He wears a moss-coloured waistcoat and the billowing sleeves of his once-white shirt are long, unbuttoned, a little frayed at the cuffs.

  We stroll towards a fork in the path. ‘You still know the island well enough for this?’ he inquires as we pause beside the track to Ormaig. ‘Alone, I mean.’

  ‘Yes, of course. I have walked this path with Macquarie, and walked it alone. Do you not recall? I plan to walk it every summer until age renders me lame, halt or blind. Or until the house is sold.’

  ‘Surely it will not come to that.’

  ‘Already I have several bidders, or so the attorney from Oban tells me. He suggests I slice the Macquarie estate into portions, as if it were a wedding cake, and sell it — well, this is how it seems to me — for little more than such a cake would fetch at market.’

  The sea breeze stirs. I reach for my bonnet.

  ‘Then he is not acting in your interests,’ he says, with a rasping rub of the chin. ‘They’d be hoping you’ll walk away. Start again on the mainland somewhere.’

  ‘And they expect me to leave with little more than my sorrows?’

  ‘It is enough that …’ He pauses. ‘Well, it angers me. You know a commission will come his way.’

  ‘Most likely. He is of the new dispensation. A speculator.’

  ‘The age,’ he mutters. ‘Surely it is out of kilter.’

  As I take my leave a dark inward look steals across his agreeable face. There is something he knows, or thinks he knows, about what is, or is to come. And yet he will not say.

  His lips part, though nothing but a dull muffled sound, such as a mute might make, issues from them. I plead with my eyes but he lowers his, turns and walks away. I watch his heavy, even tread as he returns to the boathouse with his gift of cherries freshly picked.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The path through the heart of the island is firm and dry and the weather is fine. I tramp through a cool beech forest in full leaf, the treetops tease
d by a mild wind driving a few dry white clouds. I take my time.

  Columns of sunlight plunge through the tree canopy, all apple green, dappling the grass below. The glistening shoots grow tall in the warming earth. Through them spreads a lovely filigree of purple wildflower.

  At this time of year Nature takes as much pleasure in her own abundant beauty as she gives to her admirers. She is Flora, gorgeously attired, triumphant — Queen for a time and Queen for all time.

  A thin brook trickles into a shaded pond lacquered at its rim with a black stillness. On that other island, so very far away, the skies are home to quarrelsome birds that screech and squawk, and others that roar with a laughter that would be truly diabolical if it were not so comical. Here the birds circling above flute sweetly. I have not heard true birdsong in a long time.

  Higher up the forest gives way to a bare, almost ashen landscape of basalt and mountain heather. The path here twists to face the southwest and from its summit a view unfolds of a cold ocean very like that deep celestial blue of early evening. To the west lies a flotilla of islets scattered like chipped shillings: Little Colonsay, Inch Kenneth, and Staffa with its organ pipes of stone. I see how patches of ocean are scuffed by the breeze. The waves battering the rocks are a broiling acid green.

  On the way to the village of Ormaig below, I pause to take in the sight of the sea reaching into lochs, sounds, narrows, channels and, finally, little rills veining their way across the marshes. Quite suddenly I am struck, swept up. Transported.

  Here at the fringe of the island, with a fine view across Loch na Keal towards the cliffs of Ardmeanach, I could so easily be standing at the mouth of that grand Antipodean harbour flowing between one mighty buttress of sandstone and another, barely a mile apart. There is the same broad sweep of seawall, a land edge that will not surrender easily to the elements but rather rises proud and strong against them. The same pure lonely air.

  Why has it never registered before, this echo of one world in another so far away? But I see it now. See it clearly.

  I look about me for a place to rest. The stone wall beside the path is low enough to serve as a seat. Removing my bonnet, I turn towards the sun. I close my eyes.

  I am standing on a bare headland in the New World gazing at a rippling sheet of sunlit sea. A man stands further out, towards the weathered ledge. He keeps a spyglass fixed to his eye. ‘It is the French,’ he says, lowering the instrument and turning to me excitably. ‘See how quickly they sweep in.’ The wind tugs at his shirt. He pays it no heed …

  The same man stands before me, visible yet dimly so in the gloom. It is wet. Cold. We are alone. He offers me his forearm. I take it, rolling the sleeve above the elbow, running my fingers over a red welt — serpentine, meandering — branded on the pale, tender underside …

  The taste of sea salt powdered on skin …

  I walk proudly arm in arm with my ageing husband, a tall man, though a little stooped with care, towards a meeting of natives. The air buckles with their chant. I comprehend nothing of its meaning. But this I do know: it is to two of these natives — one elderly and bearded, the other known to me by the plaited band about his crown — that I owe my life …

  I exchange pleasantries beneath a blazing sun with a small athletic Englishman whom I know to be an assassin …

  There is a subtle shift in the wind direction, and a quickening. The slight chill stirs me from my memories. How long have I been here, yet not here at all? An hour, I would guess. My left index figure has reached for my upper lip, pressing gently there as if sealing in a secret. I am not ready, I decide, for Ormaig. Now is not the time. So I raise myself from the stone wall, smooth my dress, and retrace my steps.

  The boatman is waiting for me. He stands hinged forward from the waist, one foot planted on the bench beside a rough outdoor table of broad planks painted a cheering blue. In his right hand, forearm across thigh, he holds a pipe; in his left a wad of tobacco, which he rolls gently in his palm. He, too, is lost in thought.

  ‘I see you have been busy?’ I inquire as I draw near.

  ‘You mean the bench,’ he brightens. ‘Yes, a few months ago with the first true signs of spring.’

  There is time then for a cup of tea at the blue bench, even if the boatman’s society is not as lively as I had hoped. Instead it is taken in companionable silence. Between drinking his tea and drawing on his pipe, he casts anxious looks towards the boathouse on the rise. I catch sight of a nimbus of blonde hair filling the kitchen window, spinning away sharply from my gaze.

  How jealously his wife looks on.

  *

  When I step onto the rickety pier on the Mull side of the narrow Sound the boatman returns the milk-white satchel with the crimson stains.

  I take the bag by the shoulder strap and, unable to resist the temptation, steal a look inside.

  Yes, it is there!

  The weight of the letter in its envelope is imperceptible, and yet I sense it as if it were a clay tablet or missive in stone.

  ‘It is kind of you to return the bag,’ I say, masking my anticipation with a bland courtesy. ‘Of course — the stains. A little unseemly.’

  ‘Not permanent,’ he says with a deepening of those pleasing creases beside the mouth — a little like brackets — that a lean man will likely acquire with age. ‘Nothing that can’t be removed with a good scrubbing. And a little time.’

  He is once again my old friend. But a friend with a secret. In this he is, I decide, much like me.

  He takes his seat, picks up the oars, and gives a most solemn nod of farewell; quite unnecessary in the circumstances. Surely he understands that I mean to return the next fine summer day. With the weight of only one the boat lurches with his first heave of the oars. They dig into the water, churn and stir. He is enjoying his power now; I am enjoying it, too.

  I wave and loop the bag over my shoulder.

  ‘We will see one another again soon,’ I call as he glides across the narrows.

  The boatman is silent for a few strokes and his answer, when at last it comes, is lost on the breeze.

  He is Charon and he ferries me between the lands of the living and the dead. How handy would a coin have been, for that was Charon’s customary payment. I shall return to him. I shall rejoin the living.

  The black mare I have named Gooseberry after a fondly remembered notable of Sydney Cove stands contented beneath the thin shade of a willow, her fine head buried in a stand of long grass. As I approach she raises it, shakes her mane, stamps and snorts approvingly. Before mounting — they will think me wild and headstrong to ride astride her — I take the envelope from the bag. The word Elizabeth has been written in his distinctive hand, a lavish scroll beneath it.

  CHAPTER THREE

  There is such a thing as fine summer weather in these parts, though rarely does it last more than a fragment of any day. A mild dawn will give way to rain by mid-afternoon; a clear afternoon will succumb to storm by sunset. Today, by some providential magic, the weather has been golden from dawn to dusk.

  I had laid aside my widow’s garb this morning when I saw the sun and felt a little of its heat. Perhaps it was an error to step out in a sky-blue cotton dress over a pair of stout brown shoes. It will have been noticed, this want of plainness. But I felt drawn, summoned — stirred — by the warmth. And how long must this severity last? I was not made for pilgrim dress.

  Now, with a twilight sky clotted by cloud and a sliver of moon hanging askew above Ben More, it is very gloomy in this house. I light the lamps and a candelabrum, of which there is one fewer since the departure of the English butler. And while there is no human warmth but mine within these walls, the hearths and the kitchen stove, at least, throw out a plush heat.

  The footman is more like an errant son than a domestic; I never see him in the evenings. He returns between midnight and dawn, sleeps in and wears a complexion of parchment until mid-afternoon, when he takes his first restorative dram. It’s only then that the colour returns to his cheek
s. His greedy nights steal all the goodness from his days. But if I were to assert what is left of my authority over him I would, I fear, have no footman at all.

  The woods wrap around one corner of the house, and it is here, in my bedchamber, that I have my walnut bureau. I call it mine, though it was Lachlan’s a year ago. By day the window frames a view of a glorious green world: moss carpeting rock and trunk below, an arabesque of green leaf spreading and deepening above, and the air between as still and syrupy as a fishbowl.

  Some of the trees have been allowed to grow too close to the house and on nights like this, with a north wind stirring the forest, branches scrape and tap their bony fingers on the windows as though soliciting entry.

  My poor husband lies in the cold earth sheltered by a plain tomb of rosy sandstone — not Sydney stone but a good likeness of it — and a roof of slate quarried from Belnahua across the Firth of Lorn. I had work begin on the mausoleum as soon as I could muster the funds. Plans for this simple structure — in appearance much like a poor man’s Gothic chapel — were delivered to me within the month. Stone was quarried, cut and dressed; labour hired; and the forest cleared at a place close enough to serve as a memorial, though not too close. The winter here is bleak enough. Work on the Macquarie mausoleum stalled in the hard months, resumed in spring, and hastens towards completion beneath this summer sky.