Mrs. M

by Luke Slattery

  On a full sheet of paper I pen just the one sentence in reply.

  My profound hope is that one day you shall feel it!

  I seal the envelope and set it aside for Brody.

  And then, a week later, comes the letter I savoured at the start of this long night’s vigil. The brief missive where he recalls our first meeting, and I relive it through his eyes.

  When I reread that letter I am permitted through the white magic of the written word — preserved not for all time but certainly for my time — to know and feel the effect I had on him at the very moment we met. I strode into his life as the missing half to the whole he had yearned for: a woman of like, but not identical, mind. The memory of that formidable yet ill-fortuned man and what he felt … what I came to feel! It grieves me so much that it near blinds me with tears.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  I wake to a bright morning, hungry for the day ahead. At this time of year the winds are high and the harbour waters shine like beaten metal beneath a brazen Antipodean sun. On such days the town seems more like an idea, or an illusion. Blink and it might disappear.

  I fling back the plain navy curtains and raise the sash windows. The green scent of ocean and eucalyptus drifts in across the harbour on a northerly breeze.

  Granted, it is not Canaletto’s Venice. Those sumptuous views of La Serenissima are of waterways lapping at marble cobbles, statuary of bronze, gilded and coffered vaults, of wealth beyond measure. And yet there is no space to ride or run in that lavishly ornamented miracle crowded upon pylons in the lagoon. My morning view is one, rather, of promise. Here is Nature a short span beyond her state of purity.

  On the promontory across the Cove is Dawes Point with its busy flagstaff. In a sweep below me are the main features of the bustling settlement. There are a dozen merchant ships at anchor, a few pleasure craft moored at the wharf, a fringe of cottages and warehouses — Campbell’s most prominent — along the shore. A mess of shacks and hovels spreads across The Rocks. On a hillock above them, the terraced military hospital. And a new generation of buildings — designed to delight — from the hand of the Architect. Just below me rises the new fort at Bennelong Point, to which Brody has been billeted so that he might keep the Governor in regular contact with the men charged with the twenty-four-pounders. ‘Given the power of that ordinance, and its sensitive placement, the last thing I need is trouble at the fort,’ Macquarie explains. I believe it is the most romantic of all buildings at the Cove, although our critics are fond of saying that it was designed more with Elsinore than Sydney in mind. I concede that its Gothic aspect does seem a little out of place beneath a bright sky: poor weather improves it. Strange to think that the architect of the new fort, and of so much else, sits at this moment at a bench on the ground floor of the lighthouse, the tools of his most valuable trade gathered around him in company’s stead.

  Or so I permit myself to imagine.

  Today, rounding Middle Head, is a novelty: a jaunty ketch out for a bit of sport in the sunshine. I enthuse to Macquarie, who sits slumped on his side of the bed. His hands are braced across his knees and his head is bowed; he appears like a man under sentence. He rubs his face and rises.

  ‘It is Simeon Lord’s,’ he says without looking at me. ‘The man is now so wealthy that he commissioned the work from two shipbuilders, brothers recruited from the shipyards of Glasgow. It is used mainly by his sons on days such as this — a pleasure craft. Can you believe? In a penitentiary at the end of the Earth!’

  Stepping to his side of the bed to lay a healing hand on his heavy shoulders, I add in a peevish tone performed for his benefit, ‘In my childhood a fine seaworthy vessel of its ilk was far too valuable a thing for a lark.’

  ‘Precisely.’ He rises, stiff and rusty about the hinges. ‘Fishing and the transport of men and goods — arms when they were needed. Although there was a busy trade for a time in day trips from Ulva, was there not? Do you recall the autumn day both King and Queen made the journey to Staffa? It rained so heavily that the monarch, drenched to his royal bones, vowed never to return. That vessel was no larger than this one’ — he flings a contemptuous hand towards the ketch — ‘built for mere sport.’

  ‘All before my time dear,’ I say with a flat smile. ‘My deepest impression is that the islanders thought nothing of Staffa’s wonders because they were so accustomed to them; they had always been there.’

  As Macquarie moves off towards the dressing room he gives the door jamb an unintentional nudge, seeming to tilt into it. I notice that he clears the door with greater ease than he used to. By my reckoning the cares of the colony have shaved several inches from his stature.

  Over breakfast he tells me he will be away for a few days. There is trouble at Parramatta, he says. ‘A papist priest is fomenting discord in the countryside with talk of Catholic rights. Or so the Reverend Marsden claims; Marsden paints him as Savonarola and Wolfe Tone in equal measure. The priest, Father McGinny, can hardly be arrested and led away in chains, but it will take what remains of my authority — and perhaps the threat of firmer measures — to encourage him back to Port Jackson. I aim to have him on the next ship home. But I fear that he will prefer the path of his creed’s glamorous martyrs. An act of coercion might better suit his cause than an accommodation.’

  ‘Not the sort of work to which I am suited,’ I say. ‘For I may show some sympathy for the Catholic priest. What, I often wonder, is the point of religion if it cannot better the lives of its believers. Surely this priest means only to advance his flock.’

  ‘Even without Macarthur’s multiplying sheep there are far too many flocks in this colony and all clamour for advancement: the soldiery, the emancipists, the merchants, the native born — the natives themselves. And when I attempt to advance some worthy person for the common good, there is a kerfuffle. The soldiers and the settlers will hear nothing of the eminent good sense in appointing William Redfern to the magistracy. They cling to the one tiresome objection: that he was once a convict. But they cling to it fiercely. If that kind of attitude prevails then I predict’ — he shakes his head as if dousing it in icy water — ‘the colony will sink back into the mire from which it first arose.’

  ‘You are much put upon, my dear,’ I say. ‘Much too much!’ He is heavy of heart and I struggle to raise his spirits. It is not only the untold difficulties and obstacles that he must surmount to govern this unruly colony, it is his tendency to cogitate upon his cares. It can make for a very dull household.

  ‘You will be fine here,’ he says, rising to take his leave with a rallying little jab directed at nothing but air.

  I go straight to the study and take up the violoncello in a familiar embrace — there is more warmth in this instrument than in our bedchamber. I play a prelude by Couperin and though I play the piece imperfectly it stirs and awakens me, chord by sombre chord.

  I pause and drum my fingers on the instrument’s belly. Such solitary playing. All too often a solo part.

  In the corner is a full-length mirror. I approach, not without trepidation. The form is still firm; maintained by walks through the Domain, canters on the grey across poorly kept tracks, and gardening in the early morning before the heat of the day comes on. But the lightly freckled face that swims before me — can it really be mine? Few lines of great depth, and yet no life in the cheeks, no lustre about the eyes. Is it age? I raise my fingers, trace the border of my lips. Pleasant to the touch, these full lips. How long since they were touched with a kiss that was truly felt? I have been kissed courteously. And kissed inquisitively. But not — not for a long while — kissed with heart.

  I live with a beloved, ageing man. His steady unimpassioned love was once enough. Is it still? How long before I, too, age and creak about the house, the thick blood pulsing through the veins as sluggish as a silted river?

  I am not content with this situation. I strain against it. I am not for slowness, weariness and care. I am young enough to be angered by the waste of life — of my own life.
The day is warm and bright and yet I shudder. A frost has fallen over me. If I do not move — move this minute — I swear I will die of a frozen heart.

  I ask a servant to seek out Brody.

  The ensign helps me into the side-saddle of a penny-coloured mare, hands around my waist.

  ‘The Governor,’ he inquires a little disapprovingly as he swings himself gracefully from stirrups to saddle, ‘will he be expecting this?’

  ‘Certainly not,’ I answer with a flick of the reins. ‘But there is no reason he should ever know.’

  A few strides and he has caught me. ‘But I will need to report, ma’am.’

  ‘Report, then, that we have toured the town.’

  ‘But if he learns from someone other than me …?’

  ‘Then I will say the witnesses were drunk.’

  ‘But if it should come from someone he trusts?’

  ‘We scarcely know anyone in the colony capable of resisting a drink before evening.’

  ‘Not even the Reverend Marsden?’

  ‘Especially not the good Reverend.’

  The boy holds his ground. The wind stirs the leaves of the eucalypts into a dry whisper. ‘I’m sorry to insist, ma’am. But it will have to be a brief visit. Your absence will be noted by … others.’

  We reach the juncture where the track branches down to the sheltered bay just inside the Heads, the place where Macquarie has settled the fishermen with a grant of Government land. I draw back on the reins and slow the mare. She snorts and stamps as we halt.

  ‘I will go on alone,’ I say, regarding Brody with a commanding air — my best chance of securing his loyalty. ‘I take some instructions from the Governor with me,’ I pat the side of my skirt.

  ‘Very well,’ he says with as low a bow as can be managed from a saddle, ‘I shall pay a visit to the fishery at the cove below.’ His eyes narrow and slide from mine. For a fraction of a second it looks as if he has something to add, but then he spurs the bay Arab and is away.

  I ask myself what Macquarie would do if Brody were to report me, or even if he were to leave some room for doubt about my movements. Of course, it would sting him. Then I would remind him of his love for Jane Jarvis, of her place in his heart. Of his youth and its passions. And I believe he would forgive me. He would have no choice other than to forgive his architect, for to punish him for no obvious crime would be to invite scandal. It would then be left to me to manage his wounded pride, a task that would doubtless occupy me for many a day. But it would be worth it.

  I do not knock at the front door but walk boldly around to the rear of the lighthouse with its large sea-sprayed windows. Yes. The Architect is there.

  He sits inside at a heavy red cedar bench, expertly planed and polished to a high sheen, with a litter of drawings and designs across its surface. His torso is bare.

  ‘Elizabeth,’ he starts. ‘You have caught me quite by surprise.’ He makes to rise, hitching his cream trousers a little higher.

  ‘No,’ I step inside and hold out a hand imperiously. ‘Please stay.’

  He lays down his nib pen, slides the ink bottle forward, wipes his hands on a cloth, and rises anyway. I catch a tremor of delight and embarrassment — almost a shyness — across his broad face. But he does not turn away. He permits himself to be admired. There, I am instantly warmed. The frost, it melts away.

  When I come towards him I can see that his chest and waist are not so much muscled as sculpted. He is leaner than I imagined. Perhaps, it occurs to me, he has spent too much time of late with pen and ink and not enough with chisel and stone; he has been deprived of the work that shaped his young form, work that he needs. I would recall him from his isolation and give him that work, and with it his life, but then I am not the Governor; I am only the Governor’s wife.

  ‘I took a morning swim at Camp Cove,’ he says, reddening. ‘The water is chill. But how it quickens the blood! I apologise for my state of near undress.’

  Quickens. Yes.

  I see how a light covering of fine hair spreads across his chest, swirling around his navel.

  ‘No, it is I who should apologise for bursting in on you unannounced. I have been impulsive. But I was concerned. Your melancholic state. I fear you are too much alone, my friend. And I — well — I am … alone without you.’

  We have danced, we two — have been dancing for years. A courtly game of advances and retreats, feints and turns: a stolen look, a furtive touch, a fugitive sigh. But this time we dance together. These steps I have never learned, and never forgotten. And they belong to no ballroom.

  I come closer: a small step followed by a long joyful stride full of purpose. He stands steady. Across his clean brown shoulders spreads a dusting of sea salt. It is then that I notice the welts where the lash caught him across his neck and chest. I turn him around gently; for the first time I survey, laid out before me, the full extent of his ghastly injuries. Ah! His back is cross-hatched with scars. He will never be the same.

  ‘I’m told it could have been worse,’ he offers, turning his head towards me. ‘I have Gooseberry and her magic to thank.’

  Stepping around to face him once more, I run my hand lightly over the scars on his shoulders. ‘Does it hurt? I know I have asked before — but now that I have seen it … entire.’

  ‘Sometimes, yes. It is the memory that pains.’

  I kiss his shoulder, his chest, tasting the salt of the sea and a pure scent that is more an absence — of liquor, of tobacco, society itself — than a presence. For he is alone with the ocean and the sea breeze at the world’s end.

  He retreats from the embrace. ‘Elizabeth,’ he says, running a hand through his thick hair from brow to crown. ‘If we should be discovered.’

  ‘There is only Brody, some way off. The Governor, he is at Parramatta.’ I shake myself from my daze to protest, ‘Is this man before me the very same who risked everything to challenge Sanderson? Has all your boldness fled?’

  I had thrown open the blue curtains in my room this morning. I go to these other curtains now and draw them tightly, bunched and overlapping, together.

  ‘Am I not worth the risk?’ I ask, removing my bonnet, shaking out my hair.

  The Architect takes my face in his hands, pulls back the rust-coloured strands from my face. He places a kiss on each cheek, another on my lightly freckled nose. ‘These blue eyes,’ he says, as if to himself. ‘This lovely face.’

  He kisses the nape of my neck. I close my eyes. He kisses the lids. I am melting into his embrace. But I grow impatient, too.

  ‘There will be time later,’ I whisper, pressing myself to him so that he may feel me. ‘Time for tenderness. Not now.’

  His hands reach for my flanks. I license his hands. I take them and place them where he does not dare.

  Now he is alive to it.

  He lifts me and takes me towards the polished cedar workbench. I place a hand on his shoulder and he sets me down before it. I turn and with one sweep of the hand send the papers and instruments to one end. I hear the small clatter of a pen as it drops to the floorboards, the dull thud of an ink bottle.

  He lays me down. I brace myself on my elbows and watch without shame as he steps back.

  At that moment I catch the whinnying of Brody’s bay Arab above the crash of surf and the moaning of the wind at the window. The Architect’s eyes widen. We spring apart, panting. I rearrange my dress.

  ‘Time,’ I cry as I bridle my hair with a clasp. ‘After all this time … this was no time at all.’ I lean towards him, placing a hand on each bare arm. ‘Pray that we have another.’

  His quick green eyes are wide and bright and he seems to struggle, like one shaken awake from a brilliant dream. He turns from me — those scars! — and retreats. I open the curtains as he covers himself hastily with a linen shirt.

  The unwelcome sight of the bay Arab, tethered to the lighthouse enclosure, greets me. The young ensign stands towards the ledge staring discreetly out to sea.

  Brody helps me to m
ount before riding ahead. I shout for him to wait. He slows and when I fall in beside him, furiously flushed, I ask why he would not give me longer.

  ‘It’s as I said, ma’am. We do not want a long absence to be noted.’

  ‘We?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am,’ he says a little sheepishly.

  As we ride back at a steady trot he reveals the identity of his fiancée. It is none other than the pretty Miss Ringold. Of course her father — now I recall — is a milliner with a store on George Street: Ringold’s Hats for Everyday and Evening Wear. The store was open two weeks before it was pointed out to Ringold that he had spelled ‘Wear’ as ‘Ware’ on the shopfront sign. It was promptly corrected, but not before Howe had noted the error satirically in a small column devoted to correct English usage. He went so far as to suggest that Mr Ringold’s hat size must be small indeed if he had never learned to spell. A cruel taunt, as the old milliner, who hailed from Dresden, knew at least one language more than Howe, even if his English was a little infirm.

  ‘My fiancée,’ confesses Brody as he slows the horse to a walk. ‘She watches us — the comings and goings. She says she harbours no suspicions. But she also tells me she thinks you very beautiful, and high-spirited to boot. And I am left in no doubt that she is fearful …’

  My blush must have deepened at that moment for he checks himself. ‘“A fine and good woman,” she calls you. Fine and good. But she will have taken note of our time together. If a lengthy joint absence from the residence were to result in a lover’s tiff, well, it would not be the first, will not be the last. But you do not, I think, want idle talk among the help. Because people will — and do — talk.’

  I turn from Brody, who has managed unwittingly to raise the measure of fear and guilt in my already troubled mind, and cue the penny-coloured mare to a canter.