Captive Wife, The

by Kidman, Fiona

  I did not say these words, did not give her the satisfaction of knowing whether they are familiar to me or not. Instead I turned a dark look on her that silenced her.

  I am putting out to sea again next week I said after a bit. Leaving that to hang in the air.

  You’re hardly back said Charlotte, like she is unsettled by me coming and going.

  Perhaps it is me she wants after all, but the moment was over long ago. I do not want to hold Charlotte, not even to cool me down. I wd see to that business down the street when I had done talking with her. Even though I am tired of hooers and their tricks but what is a man to do.

  I said to her, I will take the girl with me.

  You cannot.

  I can I said. She will be all right with me.

  I am not myself. I am a man who likes my own company well enough, that is all. It is said of me that I’m a loner but that is because men who are in charge of things do not go about telling the world their thoughts. Although there are things I need from a woman, I have never taken a woman to sea. Now I found some idea stirring in me that is strange to me.

  She is my daughter’s girl said Charlotte. You cannot take her.

  I could. We both knew that. I could have put down 20 pound on the table and the girl wd be mine.

  Something made me stop.

  I put down 12 sovereigns on the table. She is to go to school I said.

  Charlotte looked at the money. That is not enough to keep her. She has gone and got herself a job. She is going to work for the Jews who have opened for trade up George Street.

  All right I said, putting 10 pounds on the table and making sure to take the sovereigns back. There is Ragged School at the end of the week. See she learns to read and write and do some sums.

  Charlotte sniffed and twisted her shoulders. I could tell she was jealous.

  I put some sovereigns back, 3 or 4. That is for you.

  All right she said brightening up.

  And then I said here is another tenner. It is for Harriott to get her children back from that orphanage. Though why I’m putting money in John Deaves’ pocket which is where it will end up is more than I can tell.

  Charlotte looked at me as if I’m peculiar which perhaps I am.

  Chapter 2

  Sydney, 1829

  From behind the pages of her book, an account of the fall of Rome, Miss Adie Malcolm watches the girl in the third row of desks. Although it is autumn, it is not the season as the teacher knows it. She sighs noisily, not just because a hot breath of wind is torching everything in its path, and the schoolroom is like a furnace, but because she knows her task is thankless. Why speak of classical Rome or the miracles of Greek architecture to children who will never experience these glorious creations, never see the Sistine Chapel or the Parthenon? It seems only yesterday that Miss Malcolm had travelled to Athens, accompanied by her brother, visiting the great Temple of Poseidon before setting forth for the Greek countryside. It was at the temple that she had had her first intimation of how scandalously the young could behave. In recent months, it had been discovered that a certain Lord Byron had etched his name upon one of the sacred bricks, as if he were a common thug, a vandal with no respect for the work of the masters. Better that he is dead, Miss Malcolm thinks, as she watches her charges laboriously write their essays. His much praised verses were downright immoral. Romantic and sentimental, the way the girls among her charges would be, given half a chance.

  When she thinks of her brother, Miss Malcolm trembles; it was in his hands she had trusted herself to come to this distant country, far away from home. ‘Adie,’ said Percy, ‘now that our parents have died, we’re free to go to the new world, to make a brave, fresh start. Just you and me. We’ve seen enough of the old world — why don’t we strike out for Australia?’

  Sailing across the world — it was not what Miss Malcolm had imagined might happen to her. She would have been happy to remain in the house in Lincoln where she grew up, but Percy was always a boy with a heart set on adventure, and she couldn’t, for the life of her, see herself being left alone. But of course, that is exactly what has happened. He’d stepped ashore in Sydney and in the space of a month had been discovered by Miss Maude Hatherley, a spinster of even more indeterminate age than Adie Malcolm herself, who didn’t seem to mind a man who was plain in his appearance, provided he had means. Although, as it turns out, Maude is not quite past child-bearing age. Adie shudders to think of it. And so much for her new life; she is a governess again, exactly as when she left the shores of England, and the nearness of all she considered beautiful and worthwhile. Although, for now, until something better comes up, she supervises a class of ragged children in what passes for a school. The school meets for three days a week, designed to serve the needs of children who work for the rest of the week.

  ‘Please Miss,’ says a girl in the third row of desks. That girl.

  ‘Yes, Betsy.’ Miss Malcolm’s stays are troubling her, much too tight for the Sydney climate, and for a moment she can hardly breathe. A river of perspiration runs between her buttocks. She hopes that the girl will not ask for anything that will require her to move from behind her desk.

  ‘I need more ink, Miss.’

  ‘Ink? Well, I dare say you do, Betsy, given that from where I’m sitting you appear to have more ink than words spread around your page. I told you to fill your inkwells before class began. Did you not do that?’

  ‘I forgot.’

  ‘You forgot. Yes, Betsy Deaves, you forget a great deal of what I say to you. What goes on in that head of yours when I’m talking?’

  The girl stares back at Miss Malcolm as if she is her jailer. ‘My name’s Elizabeth Parker.’

  ‘I have you here as Betsy Deaves. I don’t think you know who you are.’ She feels inclined to slap the girl, give her a smart knock with her pointer, only Betsy, or Elizabeth, call her who you will, suddenly looks larger and stronger than Miss Malcolm had realised. The wild notion that she could be attacked, here in Sydney, in this pit of iniquity, is not beyond the imagination. Betsy, for that is the name that has been given to Miss Malcolm by Mr Spyer, who is the girl’s sponsor for a position in this school, has dark eyes that roam the room when she is being spoken to, as if she is a captive bird looking for an open window, or just a ray of sunshine, despite the shutters that cover the glass halfway up. Betsy wears a brown cotton shift that fits too snugly over her well-developed breasts. Miss Malcolm worries that the girl will come too close to her, that she might brush against her with her ripe young body. Miss Malcolm has not seen her own body unclothed from top to bottom for twenty years and there is something too immediate and intimate about Betsy’s physical presence that alarms her.

  If she had had her way, Betsy wouldn’t have been allowed to come to class in the first place. But her supervisor, the principal of the Church of England’s School for Convicts’ children, had said she believed the girl not beyond redemption, and that Mr Spyer’s intervention was an admirable thing, given his own background. Betsy came from an unusually troubled home, even in this troubled place, and her mother no better than she should be. Still, the supervisor had reminded Miss Malcolm, in a voice that allowed no room for argument, there was room for rehabilitation among the souls of convicts, especially the children, so that they might not go on and offend as their parents had; it was up to them to do their best. Betsy, she said, had demonstrated a great aptitude for figures that should be encouraged before it was too late.

  But it was already too late, Miss Malcolm might have said, only she dared not. She is stout, with short teeth and long gums, not a naturally prepossessing woman but one whose strength is measured by her willingness to impart knowledge and her ability to keep discipline. There are more than enough unemployed governesses in the colonies, and she does not wish to join their ranks. All the same, she feels it her duty to point out that, at fourteen, Betsy is a head taller than most of the other miscreants in the class, and that disciplining her is quite a different matter fr
om six cuts of the cane on an outstretched palm, or the bent over bottom of the younger malcontents.

  All the supervisor says, by way of response, is that she is sure Miss Malcolm will find the girl a fair sponge for knowledge. And this is what bothers Miss Malcolm most, that Betsy Deaves does soak up knowledge, and when there is not enough of it, she gets bored and makes trouble.

  Her hand is up again. ‘Yes, Elizabeth,’ she hears herself say, as if in a dream, knowing the girl has won a round.

  ‘Could we do more sums, Miss? I can’t make no sense of this.’

  ‘Any sense. You must say, any sense, not no sense.’

  ‘Yes, Miss.’ Is it possible that a grin trembles at the corners of the girl’s red mouth? And, in the same moment, it occurs to her that Elizabeth, or whoever she is, might pinch her lips to make them look like that.

  ‘Your enthusiasm for calculation is admirable, young lady, but you must complete one task at a time.’

  ‘I don’t see what this has got to do with me.’

  Ah yes, Elizabeth, Miss Malcolm thinks inwardly, you have put your finger on it. We are of an accord. ‘It is important that you learn about the great civilisations of the old world,’ she says stiffly, ‘in order to understand the moral dilemmas of the new.’

  ‘Where is this Acropolis?’ the girl asks, trying to stifle a yawn but not quite covering her strong white teeth. She pronounces the word with an emphasis that makes it sound like Acropole-is, and Miss Malcolm thinks this is done on purpose. How frightening to think that the girl might really be clever.

  ‘Acropolis,’ she corrects. ‘It is in Athens in Greece. Far across the sea, a great journey from here. It is one of the temples that form the sacred triangle, with Poseidon at Cape Sounias and Athena on the island of Aegina, built for the gods.’

  ‘That’s not what I’ve heard about God.’

  ‘Different,’ says Miss Malcolm, ‘and I’d thank you to remember that.’ Even as she speaks, the spectre of unemployment rears itself anew. She can see that it has been an error to discuss her passion for classical mythology in this place. Unless there is some swift divine intervention she will find herself branded an heretic. She, who has prayed nightly and painfully on her knees, since her own girlhood. An ink bomb explodes on the floor beside her. As she looks frantically around to find the source, she sees there is no way of telling where it comes from. One of the O’Leary boys no doubt, longing for expulsion, so he can run free and make mischief. There is no place for children with names like theirs in a school for Protestant children, but everything is upside down in this part of the world. If she sees Elizabeth smile again, she may not be able to refrain from striking her across the cheek, slapping that look off her face. She might even be able to convince the principal that the girl is inciting the younger children to wickedness, especially the boys, who are bent on impressing her.

  Betsy, or Elizabeth, stares straight at Miss Malcolm and says: ‘I’m about to make a journey across the sea.’

  ‘And where do you think you might be going?’ Miss Malcolm asks, hoping that sarcasm will quell the ripple of unrest that threatens chaos in the room.

  ‘I’m going to New Zealand. Today is my last day.’ At last, the tension is broken, the children turning their full attention to their classmate.

  ‘Really, but you should have told me. I had no idea.’ Relief is making Miss Malcolm voluble. ‘And what will your parents be doing in New Zealand?’

  ‘My father, as you know, is dead,’ says Betsy steadily, ‘and my mother is not coming with me.’

  ‘You have a position to go to? A maid perhaps?’

  ‘No, I might have a maid of my own. I’m to be wed in the morning. Don’t you wish you were me, Miss Malcolm?’

  ‘I do not believe you, you wicked creature. You’re a lying girl as well as a blasphemous one.’

  ‘I did not blaspheme Miss, not at all, I take the word of God very serious, and as God is my witness, I will be wed in the church in the morning. My husband-to-be is a man I have known for some years, for he was an acquaintance of my father, and a friend of my aunt who also works for him. He has been what you might call my gentleman caller, though he doesn’t have to call to see me, for nearly three years. Jacky is a man any girl would be proud to marry, quite tall, or at least tall enough, for already I’m taller than most men I know. His beard is black, and his voice like thunder when he is angry, though he never is with me. He has his own station in New Zealand where whales are trapped and boiled down — he tells me all about it when he sets me on his knee. I am going to keep the records for him and enter his ledgers with the coming and going of the money he gathers. And so, Miss, I am taking my leave.’

  Chapter 3

  LETTER FROM MISS ADELINE MALCOLM OF ROSEWOOD BOARDING HOUSE, CASTLEREAGH STREET, SYDNEY, TO HER brotHER PERCEVAL MALCOLM ESQ. AT PARRAMATTA, NEW SOUTH WALES

  4 June 1829

  My dear and esteemed brother

  I believe it is time that I gave you news of myself, and what is happening in Sydney.

  I continue to live in this boarding house, respectable enough in its way, run as it is by a Mrs Watson. The meals are regular and the rooms kept clean and so far we have had no rascals allowed past the door, although you would not believe how the town is overflowing with them these days. Certainly, you were wise to leave Sydney and move to a more salubrious place. I have a picture of you in my mind at this very moment, seated on the verandah of the lovely house that you and Maude have been so fortunate to acquire. You will be looking across green fields and the spring blossom in flower, just like dear old England. Yes, you are far better out of it, especially now that a blessed event is coming your way, and indeed, I do understand what a great surprise it must have been to you and my dear sister-in-law when you learned this news. There are fights here that make the hair on my head stand up of its own accord, and is not something that the young should ever be exposed to. The last few nights some entrepreneurial fellow has been charging three shillings a half hour to watch Aboriginals doing club fights with one another.

  One of the Aboriginals was seriously wounded the other evening, which has been the cause of much conversation. I dined with Mrs Roddick one night, whose husband is Lieutenant Gerald Roddick of the 50th Dragoons. I first met her at a church meeting. She, poor soul, was frightened out of her wits, as she had had to go and fetch a doctor for little Austen who has been taken ill with a bad chest cold, and on her way home she came upon this frightful spectacle, which has left her in a state of shock. It is hard for the women when their husbands are away, as is Lieutenant Roddick, who has been at Norfolk Island. A lady at dinner, overhearing this conversation, did mention that it was one way to get rid of these savages from the streets, if they are all killing each other off. But I am of the opinion that these are souls that might be saved, and we should not write them off to oblivion so easily. Still, I am in no mind to go about the task of saving them myself, it is difficult enough looking after my charges at this wretched school where I am landed up at the moment. There are girls taller and stronger than me, and one of them challenged me just a few days ago in a way that quite took my breath away. Her name is Betsy Deaves (she calls herself Elizabeth Parker in moments of high-mindedness), the daughter of a slattern from the Rocks and a man now dead in Sydney Harbour, some say he drowned himself out of grief when she left him. Yet the way she looked at me, you would think she saw herself as superior. Then she told me she was getting married. I hope for her sake there is a marriage band at the end of it. If she is anything like her mother, I would not be surprised if she is simply running off with the man. It is very unsettling to be so close to God knows what awfulness.

  I do the best I can to stay cheerful. Governor Darling has assured Mrs Roddick’s husband and his regiment that he will not allow the emancipist sympathisers to gain the upper hand. All the same, it is troubling that people should want the ex-convicts, the ticket of leave men, to have the same rights as free people here. It’s even been suggested t
hat they should sit on juries. What is the world coming to? I wonder, did that possibility occur to you when we set out for Australia?

  My dear brother, forgive me, I should tear this up and start all over again, for that sounds like a reproach, but just think of it as the musing of your Big Sister, Addled Adie, as you used to call me when you were a wee boy, all for a jape. I could never be cross with you for a moment. All the same, it is a dangerous town, and I feel that, not only might I have some respite from it, but I might also be of great assistance to Maude, when her time comes. I learned many little nursing skills when I attended our mother, during the last years of her life. No, no, there I go again, I know that a lying in is not a deathbed, but Maude will need someone to bring her cool drinks and change her sheets regularly, and I would like to think that it was done by none other than,

  Your own and always loving

  Sister Adie.

  PS Mrs Roddick has suggested I might call her Emmeline when we are alone together. I am glad to have one good friend.

  LETTER FROM MR PERCEVAL MALCOLM, PARRAMATTA, NEW SOUTH WALES TO HIS SISTER, MISS ADELINE MALCOLM, ROSEWOOD BOARDING HOUSE FOR LADIES, CASTLEREAGH STREET, SYDNEY

  12 October 1829

  Dear Adeline

  I cannot keep silent on the subject of your last visit here, which pained my wife greatly.

  It grieves me that I must write to you in this manner; it is not what our parents would have wished. I have always deferred to you as my older sibling, and I do not ignore the consideration that you have shown me in the past. However, as a married man with a child, I must now assume the role of Head of the Family, and observe the duties that go hand in hand with that responsibility. My dear Maude had made great preparation for her lying in, and everything was put in its proper place when you arrived and took over our household. But nothing was to your liking. You shifted every little thing about our house, so that the servants were unable to find anything. You criticised and carped about so many of our domestic arrangements, that I swear you turned the milk sour more than once. It is no thanks to you that our son was born in good health, for my dear lady was in such a state of agitation when the hour came, that she might have died. I am not accustomed to the sounds of such anguish.