by Judy Johnson
‘I guess he didn’t mean it, though,’ she continues. ‘He didn’t come back, did he? He woulda come back, wouldn’t he? If it were true what he said?’
‘Yes.’
‘They’re bastards, ain’t they, men? Or don’t ya know that yet, Mary Oxnam?’
‘Some of them are,’ I say, thinking about Papa.
She shrugs, and the frills at her shoulders jiggle. ‘You think you’re all grown up, don’cha? But yer not. You don’t understand why I’d let meself get hurt like that. When yer pa is handy with the switch, ya just get used to it.’
I can’t let this pass. ‘Why wouldn’t you want to get your own back now you’re older? Use the switch yourself?’
‘That’s what you’d do, ain’t it?’ Her eyes narrow. ‘The difference twixt you and me is, I’m a proper woman. Nice and soft like.’
‘Like what, Laura? A punching bag?’ I can feel blood’s slow pump in my head. This conversation is getting a bit too close for comfort.
The roll of her eyes is pitying. ‘Ya gotta do what they want. The sooner ya get that idea in yer plain little head, the better.’
There’s a long glance from my hair down to my boots, but she’s not quite as caustic about the task as Nicole was. There’s something else playing around her mouth. Not envy, surely?
‘I gotta get on,’ she says. ‘Don’t ya worry ’bout Bob. That’s what us workin’ girls is for — to get the rough stuff outta their system. I daresay he’ll be different with you. You being untouched — like. A wife takes over where a mother leaves off. And a man wouldn’t beat his old ma, now would he? If you’re a good wife, you’ll be all right.’
I don’t mean to speak my next thought out loud, but the itching of my palms distracts me into mumbling, ‘What if I’m not a good wife?’
There’s a rustle in the bushes, probably a rat. We both move a little closer to the light near the open door.
She snorts, then shakes her head. ‘Well then, ya silly cow, you’ll deserve whatever comes to ya. I can’t stay here yabbin’ all night, I gotta go to work. I ain’t one of them bleedin’ telephonists makin’ me money standin’ up.’
The next day I’m almost past the butcher’s on my morning walk when I see Heccy. He’s headed for French Charley’s, trotting briskly with a crate of empty bottles. He glances at me, and I know by the look on his face that there’s been another murder.
‘Wait up, Heccy! Who is it? Not Laura?’
A hot wind tousles his red hair. His eyes are watery. Over his shoulder, the bay seethes with miniature white cockscombs.
‘M-M-Marjorie,’ he says.
Marjorie? I try to bring her face to mind. A chatty girl. Plump, agreeable. She had a blackened tooth in front that she touched up with Chinese white paint. She’d fan it dry, then spend the evening in a difficult juggling act: keeping her moist top lip in the snarl position away from it without appearing as though she would bite any man who came near her. She couldn’t have been more than seventeen.
‘She’s been d-dead a week. They only j-just found her, in some reeds in the m-m-mangroves.’
‘A week! Didn’t Charley notice she was missing?’
‘He thought she’d gone with one of the m-miners.’
That would make sense. Occasionally, for a price, Charley would allow a digger to take one of the girls to a prospectors’ camp for a week. Provided she was returned in one piece.
‘I suppose you’re happy to hear it, are you?’ I ask. ‘One less sinner.’
A Chinaman carrying two buckets of coal on either side of a long pole shuffles his hips side to side as he passes. His conical hat, held on by a string around his neck, has been blown off his head by the wind. It sits on his back like a pointed hunch.
‘It’s not m-my fault she was a whore.’ Heccy’s face is pale, his freckles stark in the sun. ‘It’s the L-Lord having the last word.’
I look down at his hands holding the crate. Big, powerful hands he hasn’t yet grown into. Charley’s told me something of his background. How he comes from a strict Methodist family. How his mother and father were killed in a house fire on the property they were caretaking at Ingham and, orphaned, Heccy’s search for work brought him to Cooktown. French Charley’s was the only employment on offer. I wonder how he copes with the constant assault on his morals, night in, night out. I remember the night he stopped me in the alley. How he seemed so much more powerful; the cabbage-tree hat pulled low over his face, the long coat. The remarkable absence of his stammer.
‘You wouldn’t have hurt those girls, would you, Heccy?’
‘M-me? No!’ His shock seems genuine enough.
‘Was Marjorie strangled like Nicole?’
He nods, tightly. ‘With that r-ribbon round her n-neck.’
My focus sharpens. All of Charley’s girls wear satin ribbons in different colours.
‘Is that what Nicole was strangled with too? Her ribbon?’
He nods again.
Carefully now. ‘How would you know a thing like that?’
‘Sub-Inspector B-Brooke’s telling the story all over t-town.’ He mumbles something else, which I can’t hear clearly.
A shadow falls over us. It’s a relief to have the sun gone. But there’s a grey, sinewy centre in the cloud overhead; a muscle of rain cramping, getting ready to release its load.
‘Where’s Fitzgerald?’ I ask. ‘Does he know that Brooke is sabotaging the investigation?’
Heccy shifts the weight of the crate from one arm to the other. The bottles clatter and ping. ‘He’s g-gone bush again. After the b-b-blacks that killed that family.’
16
An accident by any other name would smell as fishy.
From the secret diary of Mary Watson
19TH DECEMBER 1879
The afternoon sun boils a seafood stench off Ah Ping’s fish stall on the wharf. I still come here occasionally. It seems less suspicious than an abrupt absence after my regular assignations with Dirty White Neckerchief. Today, a man in stained tan trousers held up by a frayed leather belt approaches me.
‘Miss Oxnam?’
I turn briefly. The sun’s in my face and I can’t make out his features clearly. Just a dark, man-shaped shadow cut out of feverish sky.
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Would you excuse me just one minute?’ I turn back to the Chinaman in his blue pyjamas and skullcap. The air from the stall is weighted with stagnant water, grease and incense. ‘How much, Ah Ping? And don’t say a shilling. I won’t pay it for a couple of snapper.’ I point at the glistening silver pile in his basket, each fish with pink-red gills like the underside of poisonous mushrooms.
‘I sell for very good price, missy. One shilling, two fish.’ His head is shaved in front, his face a shiny, blank slate.
‘I’ll catch my own for a shilling,’ I say. ‘Five pence, two fish.’
He shakes his head. The waist-long queue of hair at his back twitches like a horse’s tail swatting a fly.
‘Keep them then.’
I begin to turn away and he relents, his voice burdened with a century’s sorrow.
‘All right, missy. Five pence, two fish.’
I hand over the money. He drops the snapper into my basket. I turn slightly to give the man my full attention. Step back from Ah Ping’s stall to put the sun behind him. I want a clear look at his face. It’s then I notice the lugger tied up behind Ah Ping and his baskets, not ten feet away. Actually there are two luggers — there’s another twenty yards down the pier. I hadn’t noticed either, too concerned with my bartering. I look down to the man’s stained pants again and make the connection.
‘Is one of those Bob’s? Has something happened?’
His brown eyes smile as he takes off his battered canvas hat. He looks to be around Bob’s age, perhaps younger. It’s hard to tell — sea spray has eroded the cliffs of his face. He’s certainly a good deal taller than Bob. And so thin his trousers would fall off if not for the extra holes in the belt, raggedly fashioned, by the look, with
a bait knife.
‘Porter Green,’ he says and holds my eyes for a minute. ‘I work for Bob and Percy Fuller over on the Lizard.’
He holds out a hand as beaten up as his hat. The pinky and ring fingers are missing. I shake it briefly. The sensation is odd — like palming a cocked gun made of skin and muscle.
A coolie pushing a barrow full of melons almost runs into us. ‘Look out! Sorry, sorry.’
‘You look out,’ Mr Green snarls. ‘Or I’ll stamp your backside with my boot.’
The ‘sorries’ continue all the way down the dock, the hat bent so low over the barrow it’s in danger of overbalancing the body beneath it. In few words, Mr Green informs me that the nearer lugger is Bob’s Isabella. And that Bob’s had a small accident.
‘Is he all right?’ I ask.
‘A bit knocked about. A few days’ rest will set him well. He’s not bad enough for the hospital. We took him to John Adam’s dispensary.’
‘What happened?’
Porter Green’s long, thin face shows a faint web of wrinkles when the light hits it a certain way. A kind face, actually. He waits, as though I could answer my own question if only I wanted to. Something’s not quite right here. The silence stretches. The sun’s out again, and reflections off the water dance up through the beams at our feet.
‘It’s a long story,’ he says finally. ‘Petrel couldn’t go out because she split her mast. That’s Percy Fuller’s boat. Bob’s partner.’ He gestures over his shoulder to the lugger furthest away from us. ‘That’s why she’s in Cooktown, you see? I limped her over from the Lizard. Had to brace the mast with timber and rope. The carpenters from Victoria Stores have been shaping a new mast all morning.’
Porter Green reminds me a little of Riley Robinson: never taking the short cut in conversation if there happens to be a more scenic route.
‘I see. About Bob’s accident?’
‘Percy was on Isabella with Bob when it happened. I’ll let Bob tell the story.’ He lifts his hat. ‘Must get aboard and hurry the work along. I want to leave this afternoon. I’ll take Petrel back to the Lizard when the new mast’s up. Percy has errands in town. He and Bob can come home on Isabella when they’re ready.’
I look down the dock to Petrel. It’s not a particularly impressive sight. The mast is out, and it looks unbalanced compared to Isabella, right in front of me. Two Chinamen, in the usual outfit of pale blue drawstring trousers and buttoned tops, lean with their backs to me on the port rail. They’re waiting for something. The one on the left holds a bandaged foot out in front of him, and a walking stick. He puts one hand on the rail and leans heavily on it.
My eyes widen. I’ve seen that hand before. It’s unmistakable, even at a distance. Ugly as a chicken’s foot, with two long curved nails curled around the railing and three others broken off. It’s the hand I saw on the wanted poster. The hand of the runaway Chinaman. The one Percy said he hadn’t found.
My head buzzes with heat and confusion. What does it mean?
‘Mr Green, just before you go. Those two Chinamen … on Petrel…?’
He turns, and squints. A sudden hot gust of wind pushes my skirt against my legs.
‘New coolies to work on the Lizard. I’m taking them back with me. Bob signed off the old ones a while back, but we can’t manage on our own. There’s the farm needs tending for our fresh vegetables, and someone to cook and clean up at the house.’ He shakes his head. ‘I have to wonder where Percy’s head is, to come up with a crippled John Pigtail. I suppose it’s not up to the hired help to ask questions.’
I close my eyes briefly and try to think it through. Then open them again on what might be an important point.
‘Who chose the other Chinaman?’
‘Bob, for better or worse.’ He rubs his chin. ‘He’s a bit long in the tooth, but he seems wiry enough.’
I glance back to the second coolie. There seems nothing remarkable about him. I wonder if I’m not giving in to paranoia, speculating that he too might be somehow sanctioned by Percy, and, by extension, Samuel Roberts.
‘Are you on a contract too then, Mr Green?’
He nods. ‘I’ll be signed off eventually, just like the black boys, the Kanakas and the Chows.’
‘I’m sure Bob and Mr Fuller regard you as a member of the team,’ I say. And then, because I want to know if he knows what the fugitive Chinaman’s done. ‘You don’t get to Cooktown much, I guess?’
He shakes his head. ‘Hardly ever. There could be a war on and I’d have to wait till someone came back to the Lizard to tell me about it.’
So he’s unlikely to have heard about the murdered shopkeeper, to have seen the wanted poster.
‘Mr Fuller’s Chinaman,’ I say casually, ‘what happened to his foot?’
‘Lost some toes a few days ago. I don’t know the details. He can hobble, I suppose. But with Chows a dime a dozen …’
‘Yes, indeed.’
I chew the inside of my cheek. If the Chinaman mends quickly … Percy’s made his preference plain about who should handle the signals from Lizard Island. A headache rumbles behind my eyes.
Porter Green is clearly oblivious to the real business to be done on the island. Interrogating him won’t get me anywhere.
‘Nice to make your acquaintance, Mr Green,’ I say. ‘I must get on and see Bob.’
‘Please call me Porter, Miss Oxnam. And I don’t think it’s the last time we’ll meet.’
‘Perhaps not,’ I say, with a smile. ‘Time will tell. And it’s Mary.’
‘Mary, then.’
His smile is surprisingly soft: a creature breaking out of a cocoon, the wings of innocence still wet. Oh, for some of that innocence right now! A simple world of sea and slugs and sun, instead of all this complication.
Petrel seems to bob more vigorously in the water as he approaches, as though recognising him and wagging its tail. He leaps the yard-wide gap onto the deck. Brown arms. Straight back, as though a rod is attached to his spine. The two Chinamen stand a little straighter when he’s aboard. Their wait in the marinating sun is over. Green mutters instructions and they turn to. Ugly Hands moves with alacrity despite his injured foot and walking stick. He’s using the cover of his large hat well: it’s pulled low over his eyes so that no one on the dock can get a decent look at his face. Doubtless he knows it’s in his best interests to get out of Cooktown as soon as possible.
I put the fish into the icebox at the boarding house, wash my hands, then make my way to John Adam’s pharmacy. I need time to think, but, as usual, don’t have it.
The hollow tink of a rusty, crumpled bell above the door announces my entrance. John Adam stands erect behind the counter, a picture of eloquence in white: beard, pith helmet and suit. He looks ready to be presented to the Viceroy of Delhi, and I tell him so.
He responds with a salute of Empiric proportions and tells me he’s off for a rehearsal of the Harbourmaster’s Parade next Sunday. I’d seen the crowd gathering at the end of Charlotte Street, including the chubby little mayor, melting in his robes. This is the other side of Cooktown, held apart from debauchery and squalor; province of the three-decker businessmen from the Hill, so-called because they’re allowed three votes apiece in local elections.
‘How’s the patient?’ I ask.
‘Irritable,’ Adam says. ‘He wants to get out of bed. Truth is, he probably can — this afternoon. I’ve organised a room for him at the Sea Wah Hotel. He should rest up for a day or two. He’ll need Allcock Plasters for back pain. A blood cleanser for his scrapes. Probably some quinine wine, as he seems a little low in spirits. Oh, and some clean bandages and a walking stick for that leg. I’ve got the essentials together.’ He produces a bulging crate from under the counter. ‘Unfortunately, Bob didn’t have any money on him when he came in.’ He grins like the slot in a piggy bank.
I sigh and open my purse. After the money’s safely stored in the till, Adam becomes more expansive.
‘Though normally I’m immune to idle talk, s
omething compelling has reached my ears, Miss Oxnam.’
I watch a leech slide damply up the glass inside the big jar on the counter. A dozen others on the bottom knot and unknot, oozing over each other in a nauseating pile.
‘This idle talk, is it compelling in substance? Or in the desire to pass it on, Mr Adam?’
He brushes his forehead and eyes with his hand. ‘This something concerns you, Miss Oxnam.’
‘Really? I would have thought myself far too ordinary to attract gossip.’
‘Well, I’ll rephrase. Not you in particular. Rather, any white woman who marries Bob Watson.’
‘I see. Well, then. You’d better inform me.’
He licks his lips. ‘As you must know by now, the wild blacks go over to the Lizard regularly in their canoes. But why, Miss Oxnam? Perhaps … because Bob was involved with one of their own kind a year ago.’
‘I’m tired of this story and variants thereof. Unless you have something of vital interest to add to it. What’s done is done.’
‘Maybe it is done, if you believe Watson’s side of the affair.’ He looks around as though Bob might have lurched from his sickbed to listen at the door, then beckons me with a chapped finger.
I move a little nearer. Up close, his teeth are yellow. There’s no mistaking the smell of opium-laced cough mixture on his breath.
‘Talk is, Watson disposed of her.’ He puts a hand to his neck, performs a mock strangling. ‘And, if you marry him, you’ll be the one to pay the price. Those blacks are her tribe. They want revenge. What better revenge than to kill a European woman?’
A fly crawls slowly across the counter. Adam picks up a swatter and flattens it. We both stare at the mess.
I pull back so I don’t have to breathe in his acrid-cherry exhalations. I’m nonplussed. The whole breathless revelation has the whiff of a play being badly acted out. I am, however, interested in who put him up to it.
‘I’m surprised I haven’t heard this before, Mr Adam. It makes me think that someone is trying to deliver the information to me directly. But who, I wonder? And why have they, and you, seen fit at this particular moment to show an interest in my long-term health?’
