Captive Wife, The

by Kidman, Fiona

  In the night the ship began to shake. There was a fierce rumbling sound. My 1st thought, we was on the rocks. I went up on the deck and all was quiet and we were riding high in the water and no sign of trouble. I dropped the lead-line over and found 7 fathoms deep beneath us.

  I took myself down below and there it was again. I think perhaps it’s an earthquake, of which the natives have told me, when all the earth rolls from side to side and mighty mountains shift their seats and tumble into the sea. I believe none of this but what am I to think on hearing this harsh and grating sound so close beneath me. I think the ship is about to capsize.

  Again I went on deck and cast the lead-line, finding the same depth as before. Then for’ard it started like a living thing. In the moonlight I saw the cause of all the fuss, it was a whale and her calf rubbing against the anchor chain, as if to get the barnacles off their backs. Dawn was coming up fast and the last of the moon hurried away, and I saw 7 whales and their calves making their way out of the bay, taking their time.

  I knew then, this was where they come to have their calves, that when they pass through the strait they are on their way in and out of here. I had a vision before my eyes of a huge port filled with whaling ships the biggest the world has ever seen. As we sailed out a cloud came down across the sea and we sailed through it, the damp like quiet rain upon our faces, and I called it Cloudy Bay.

  About the house burning down. Mine is not the only 1. Some of the others have gone up in smoke. I heard the trouble was over 1 of the whalers’ wives, for she already had a husband when she come to live with him. The trouble is often about women. Not that it is anything to do with me. They think I am the chief which is true but not in the same way that the Maori chiefs rule. They expect me to put a stop to it. I have had a word with the men, told them to be careful who they take up with or they will get us all killed.

  After that, I think the trouble will pass and it is easier to stay at Te Awaiti than shift camp. In the back of my mind, I put away the idea that Cloudy Bay is there for the taking, but first I need to turn a profit for Mr Campbell on this station. I decide that I will tell nobody about Cloudy Bay.

  About this time I begin to think that if the girl wd come over with me and settle it might be a good thing. Perhaps it wd be better for her than in Sydney and I wd stay more often at Te Awaiti. On my own, it is much like an animal’s life, living on whale meat which is not good to the taste and wild turnips. I need someone to put in a garden and cook my dinners and wash the clothes.

  Was this when I began thinking of bringing Betsy over?

  No.

  I have been thinking of her night and day for going on 2 years.

  She has flashing eyes.

  Her smell is that of the sweet untouched.

  My balls ache but I do not want to put my poker in other women the way I did. When I do it is never what I want.

  Part 3

  Golden Brooches

  Chapter 10

  In her heart, Adie Malcolm does not believe that Betty Guard will return. After the first day, when she has failed to keep their appointment, she tells herself she must contain her disappointment.

  And yet each day at three o’clock, she finds herself waiting. The house is empty, except for Hettie the cook, for in this past week she has found reasons for the children to visit the homes of others. She knows this has to stop. This morning at breakfast, the lieutenant had called in, and drawn up a place at the nursery table. This is so unusual that Adie’s hands had shaken and spilled tea on the linen cloth, long ago embroidered with love knots and daisies by her friend Emmeline for her hope chest. Pale golden daisies spiral out from the centre towards the edge of the cloth and then suddenly stop near the edge. She sees Emmeline’s beautiful fingers with their translucent fingernails tracing a path on the linen as she explained why the daisies did not, as intended, cover every inch of the cloth. Emmeline had first set eyes on Gerald on her sixteenth birthday. Straight away she had known she was in love. Her mother has been coaxing her to persist at her embroidery: all the other girls were doing petit point and tapestry while she was still on lazy daisy. She had sworn to her sister that day, sworn she had breathed in a whisper, that she would go on making daisies until the day he proposed marriage to her, and then she would learn to crochet. She was sure this would happen the very next time he saw her, for she had dropped her handkerchief and he had picked it up and put it to his cheek. So she knew that this sudden stinging attack of love was mutual. Only, unbeknown to her, he was about to leave the very next day for Prussia with his regiment. So for a year and two months she had sewed on and on, often, it seemed, in vain, until one day he appeared again, and as soon as he saw her fell to his knees, beseeching her to marry him. The hand she held out to him was worn from the thimble, and the daisies had spread across the cloth as if a thousand bees had pollinated it, but at least she was able to stop. And at that point in the recital she would say, with her small laugh that Adie had so loved, ‘It’s nothing but a rag, something I would never use for more than serving the children their breakfast on.’ Adie tried to keep it fresh for all but the one day of the week when she instructed the girl who came to clean in its washing and ironing. Every morning she encouraged the children to count the daisies, which Austen still did, though Mathilde was getting bored with the game. And the lieutenant must have forgotten for the moment, the way he put his elbows on the table when he sat down, although a slight frown flickered over his brow when the tea was spilt, and Adie could have cried with vexation at her clumsiness, and the pain her carelessness would have caused.

  ‘Forgive me,’ she had said, as the stain spread among the little marguerites, wandering between the toast and the empty shells of boiled eggs.

  He had shaken his head, as if uncertain of what she was talking about, watching his children. Mathilde is seven, a sturdy girl with dark braids and a full raspberry-coloured mouth; Austen is a frail little boy of four with wispy blond hair, his complexion the colour of skim milk.

  ‘Eat up, old chap,’ said the lieutenant, picking up a discarded crust dipped in egg yolk and thrusting it in the boy’s direction. The child squirmed away, his eyes pale and yet hot at his father’s words. ‘You’ll never make a soldier at this rate,’ said the man, and for a moment Adie thought him about to weep. His heavy moustache needed a trim; it was curling over his still full upper lip, redder than that of most men. This is where Mathilde gets her rosy smile. Adie had a swift impure vision of his mouth pressing down on Emmeline’s throat which caused her to utter a small inarticulate squawk. She half rose to her feet as if choking on what she had just seen in her mind’s eye. If it had not been for that woman and her talk, this would not have occurred to her. But at that moment his proximity jolted her senses, so she almost felt the ripple of hair on his wrists, lying on the table beside her, could smell his rank breath, like hay that had been out too long, or digestion in need of a good cleanout. She could taste that smell, as if his tongue were in her mouth. She had closed her eyes, holding onto the edge of the table.

  ‘The children,’ he had said, as she lowered herself back into the chair. ‘Are you finding them too much, Miss Malcolm?’

  ‘No. Why ever would you think that, Lieutenant?’

  ‘Mrs Bowman says they have spent a lot of time at her place just lately.’

  ‘Oh really,’ she had cried out. ‘Mrs Bowman has asked Mathilde and Austen to call so often since they lost their mother, I thought she would be insulted if I did not allow them to join her children more often. She has told me they are good company for each other.’

  ‘I beg your pardon, Ma’am,’ the lieutenant said, though with a touch of insolence.

  ‘I am insulted,’ Adie had replied. ‘Yes, that is what I am.’ Of course, racing through her mind, was the conversation last week at the Governor’s dinner party. She might have known there would be repercussions. She wondered, then, if she should talk to the lieutenant about what had happened, her random comments, her disappearance wi
th Mr Barrett Marshall that others would have noted, and perhaps repeated. But a voice within told her that that would be reckless, might complicate matters still further. It had even been on the tip of her tongue to tell him about the visit of Betty Guard. And yet, she found she could not.

  ‘Well, never mind,’ Roddick had said, as if their difference was already in the past. ‘Perhaps if you could keep them home for a day or so, it would be all to the good.’

  ‘Really,’ Adie said, this time with a touch of steel in her own voice, ‘an arrangement has been made for today, and if I am to be in charge of the children, then I can’t simply cancel things at a few minutes’ notice. I will keep them home tomorrow.’

  ‘That seems to be settled,’ he said. ‘The headaches are all right?’ he asked, apparently as an afterthought, and looked away, as a gentleman should when such matters are raised.

  A flush travelled from Adie’s collarbone and up her throat. For a moment, she felt betrayed by the late Emmeline. The headaches of her middle age are a secret she had shared with no one else. Besides, in the years since she has had the children to herself she has not had much time to think about the headaches and they have all but disappeared.

  She felt her mettle firming, even as her cheeks flamed. ‘I will speak with Mrs Bowman’s governess this afternoon about future arrangements for the children. I am sure they will be disappointed if they are not to see each other again.’

  At five minutes past three on that Tuesday afternoon, the last one that Adie Malcolm will be free for some little while, there is a soft insistent rap at the door, and Betty Guard is back.

  Chapter 11

  I have come dressed with care for I want to make a good impression on Miss Malcolm. My dress is navy blue, with ivory buttons fastening the front. I wear turquoise faïence beads around my neck, and my grandmother’s best brooch for luck, not the mourning brooch that is shared by all the family, but the one she held onto after the fall, when my grandfather lost his money and land.

  The brooch is made of gold filigree and cloisonné enamelling. My mother and my aunt both eye it as if it should belong to one of them (though, goodness knows, they would have fought over it) but Granny gave it to me and I will always hold it fast. By good fortune, I left it behind on my last voyage to Sydney, otherwise it would be lost in the bush that lines the coast of Taranaki. My capture took place, not on the way to Sydney, as many have supposed, but when the ship went aground on our way home to New Zealand. I have always kept a good wardrobe at our Sydney house so that I don’t have to carry my town clothes back and forth across the Tasman. There is little call for fancy clothes in New Zealand, not on a whaling station. All the same, I hadn’t meant to leave Granny’s brooch behind me when I was here for Louisa’s christening. I was in a panic when I first discovered it left behind, for Charlotte cannot be trusted to keep her fingers out of my belongings. But as I often wear it, I suppose she never thought to look.

  I feel dashing today, my outfit finished off with the silk scarf and bonnet I bought last year.

  I have brought Miss Malcolm a gift of a paua shell, shaped like a small dish. The outside is rough but the inside is like luminous blue and green mother of pearl, streaked in swirling lines of pink and silver.

  ‘It is so beautiful,’ she exclaims. ‘This is a jewel of a shell. I hope it didn’t cost you a great deal.’

  I laugh. ‘There are thousands of them to be had around the coast of New Zealand,’ I say. ‘The flesh of the shellfish is black and like a steak. It leaves the strong taste of the sea upon your breath.’

  She continues to sit and wonder over the shell. ‘Such blue. A passionate blue,’ she murmurs, her voice quivering. After a further exchange of pleasantries, and discussions about the weather, she uncovers a prepared tea tray and goes to fetch some hot water. I hear her voice down the passage, low and insistent, as if she is having words with someone.

  I have time to look around the pretty room, which I couldn’t take in at all on my first visit. Though it is nicely decorated, it is a little shabby as if it hasn’t had much attention beside cleaning for a long time. A portrait of a lady hangs above the mantelpiece. The woman is very fine-boned with one of those big straight noses, Roman I think they’re called, and a look of pathos. She reminds me of Mrs Ivy Kentish who came to stay at our whaling station once and spent her whole stay with us in tears. So she had been shipwrecked and it was all a misery, but you learn to make do with what you’ve got, and at least she was alive. I could see this woman in the picture carrying on just the same, fainting and fluttering her eyelids when she came around, and jumping horses without falling off. They’re tougher than they make out, women like that, not my kind at all.

  Miss Malcolm follows my eyes to the painting. ‘My dear friend Emmeline,’ she says, as she pours water into the teapot. ‘We are out of mourning here, officially that is, but all of us still mourn her in our hearts.’

  I wonder if Emmeline would still be mourning Miss Malcolm if things were the other way round but I do not say this of course. This explains the run-down front room, the rubbed fabric of the chairs. No point in giving her the name of a good upholsterer; Miss Malcolm is simply a servant in this house, even if she appears to have the running of it.

  As I sit there, I’m aware that she is waiting for me to make some startling revelation. She too, has dressed carefully, as if for company. Her gown is of dull oyster satin, the neckline filled by a lace collar that frills about her throat.

  But I have nothing to say to Miss Malcolm. She is old and foolish and I don’t really know why I’ve come to see her. Well, that’s not exactly true, I do have an idea, but it’s not one I can tell her straight away.

  ‘I’ve been having bad dreams,’ I say. But I cannot go on.

  ‘What have you been dreaming about?’ she asks, as if this will get me going, like the reluctant child she once knew, and no doubt still sees.

  Now that I’m here my whole plan seems mad even to me, and I’m madness itself. It’s just this — since my last unrehearsed visit, I’ve remembered something my grandmother told me about fixing trouble. And Lord knows, I’ve enough of that. I’ve lain awake at nights, mostly alone, and pretending that I’m asleep when Jacky finally collapses beside me, and thought about Granny’s advice. Find a virgin, her touch can heal — only the touch must come from the right thumb. Well, I suppose any virgin would do though I don’t know a lot except those who are children at the Rocks. I want a grown-up one, and Miss Malcolm seems ideal.

  But I can’t see how I will get Miss Malcolm to touch me ever again. I could have offered to shake her hand when I arrived, but she would have thought that is what men do, and found it odd. Perhaps I could seem to faint and she would have to take my pulse to see whether I was still breathing.

  But all this is nonsense, and so I think I will tell her about my dreams, as she has asked. Only, there are so many, and some I do not want to tell her.

  ‘I’ve been dreaming about my Granny,’ I say, which is the truth for I dream of her almost every night. She is like a small dark sparrow hopping on the edge of sleep, admonishing me sometimes, but mostly praising me, for Granny believed in me. I was her special child.

  I can tell that Miss Malcolm is disappointed. ‘Granny is where it all begins,’ I say. ‘There is no story without Granny. She is the person who has loved me most truly and asked nothing in return, and now she is gone. She speaks to me from the grave and without her I would not be alive now. Granny Pugh is at the centre of everything I have to tell about my life before I married Jacky Guard.’

  ‘What have you dreamt of her?’ asks Miss Malcolm, as if by humouring me I will move on to something more interesting.

  But I cannot tell her. Granny comes to me in many forms, and you know how it is, it’s easy to forget dreams when you wake, and there are so many in my head, I cannot sort one out from another today. Sometimes she comes in the form of an old black spider, spinning her web, for even when she was old her eyes were dark coals and
her skin tawny. Some say spiders mean money, others say they’re a sign of death, and Granny herself was served death too often.

  ‘I will tell you about my grandmother, and perhaps that will help me understand all this trouble in my head,’ I tell the governess.

  Miss Malcolm has no choice but to sit and hear me out. My grandmother was born Hannah Smith, in the old country from where you are from, near Winchester. I believe her parents died when she was still young and she was left alone. I have wondered whether she might have come from gypsies. At any rate, she became a servant girl, which is where she fell in with a bad lad called Daniel Gordon.

  Perhaps she was set to marry Daniel and wanted to look smart at the church, who can blame her, I like to look nice myself. At any rate, he was with her when she took some clothes from the house in Upham where she worked and Daniel was a groom. The mistress said to Daniel, tell Hannah to go and help herself to some of those old clothes that have been put out for pedlars. Or that is what he told Granny.

  But the mistress must have changed her mind, or perhaps it was never true in the first place. Granny did say that there might have been confusion as to which pile she intended to throw away, but that was never clear to her. She took a red cloak, and it was not until later that she remembered that red was an unlucky colour, as well as two pairs of shoes and a pair of stockings.

  Next thing, she is arrested for stealing, and finds herself in the dock at Winchester Quarter Sessions. She was sentenced to seven years’ transportation beyond the seas. No word of what happened to that rascal Daniel Gordon. He’d vanished. What he did leave for Granny to remember him by was a little boy, and this lad was only three months when she was ordered onto one of the hulks. This is fifty years ago, around 1785, before the First Fleet set out for Botany Bay.