The Fringe of Leaves

by Patrick White

  Miss Scrimshaw bared her teeth to guide the novice towards an enthusiasm she seemed to lack.

  Then Mrs Roxburgh agreed, ‘Yes, Mrs Lovell is kind, she is most thoughtful,’ and settled the bonnet on her head, and drew the veil to disguise her face.

  While Miss Scrimshaw was organizing their departure Mrs Roxburgh searched without success for Mrs Oakes. In the end it seemed like almost everything, immaterial.

  ‘Such good people, I understand,’ Miss Scrimshaw remarked as they took their places in the unsprung carriage.

  Mrs Roxburgh could not answer. The escorts spurred their mounts, and the latter sidled and dropped their dung. Only as they wound their way downhill did she raise her widow’s veil to glance back, and there was her friend standing like a crudely modelled statue at one corner of the primitive barn. It struck Mrs Roxburgh that everything which one most respects, and loves, is rapt away too soon and too capriciously. Then the scents of laundering and baking, not to say the smell of boiled mash, rushed back, and she started sneezing.

  She lowered her veil, thankfully.

  Miss Scrimshaw said, ‘There is something in the air. I do so sympathize. I am affected by it regularly. Oh dear yes, what we suffer! But must, I suppose, put up with it.’

  So they ground on, and were rolled at dusk along the tracks linking the scattered buildings which composed the settlement at Moreton Bay.

  ‘You see, Mrs Roxburgh, I was correct in my calculations,’ Miss Scrimshaw announced and laughed.

  Mrs Roxburgh was more than ever glad of the veil falling from the brim of her bonnet. It dimmed lights and concealed thoughts. But would she hear the sounds she most dreaded? For the moment she did not.

  The Commandant’s house was set in what appeared by twilight a spacious and well-planted garden from which heady, dusk-induced perfumes were wafted through the windows of their bone-breaker of a vehicle. The residence itself, at this hour less a house than a series of illuminations, was revealed as an amorphous sprawl behind jutting verandas, the whole effect suggestive of practical comfort rather than official presumption.

  Mrs Roxburgh felt drawn to the house. She would have liked to burrow in without being received, and to remain there unnoticed. But this was not to be. The Commandant himself had been waiting for them, and had come out, and was standing on the steps, a fine figure of an officer, obviously enjoying the power and benefits which the command of a remote but unimportant outpost brings.

  Captain Lovell’s hand guided his guest out of the carriage and compelled her up the veranda steps. ‘You are almost as punctual as Miss Scrimshaw would have wished.’ He glanced back in ironic approval at his subaltern, who came as close to a giggle as an Awful Presence might allow herself.

  ‘Come!’ he commanded the prisoner. ‘Everybody has been waiting to see you.’

  ‘Oh, please!’ Mrs Roxburgh protested.

  Miss Scrimshaw came to her charge’s defence. ‘Poor Mrs Roxburgh is fatigued to say the least.’

  In the light from the doorway the Commandant’s eyes were an enamelled blue; he had the cast of face which might flush and swell, a mouth which might brood whenever thwarted; all of which would have amounted to flaws in another, but added to Captain Lovell’s looks.

  The looks or flaws were on the verge of displaying themselves when the one who was presumably his wife appeared, surrounded by a clutch of little children, fair-haired, blue-eyed, all of them agog. The mother too, was on the fair side. She made a rather crumpled impression, not unlike the gauzy bonnet which must surely have been hers before handed over to the object of her charity.

  ‘Everybody will want to see her, but not before she has put her feet up.’ Mrs Lovell decided with a firmness unexpected in one so frail and evidently harassed. ‘Mrs Roxburgh is not on parade, Tom.’

  Although he made some show of grumbling and snuffling, the Commandant accepted his rebuke amiably enough. ‘To hear your mother, anybody would think me a tyrant. Wouldn’t they, Kate?’ he appealed to the eldest little girl, who considered his question too foolish to answer.

  At the head of her platoon of children, and seconded by the inevitable Miss Scrimshaw, Mrs Lovell marched their guest to the room she was to occupy.

  ‘After all you have endured I can imagine that you will appreciate being left alone. Not that you haven’t been alone enough,’ Mrs Lovell added, and blushed, ‘lost in the bush for months on end—except for the company of blacks, of course, as we have heard—and the man who rescued you.’ Mrs Lovell blushed deeper still. ‘I mean,’ she said, ‘a room of your own, with the comforts civilization can offer, will have its appeal.’

  Mrs Roxburgh realized that she was standing stripped before Mrs Lovell, as she must remain in the eyes of all those who would review her, worse than stripped, sharing a bark-and-leaf humpy with a ‘miscreant’. To the children, she was of even greater interest: they saw her squatting to defecate on the fringe of a blacks’ encampment. Only the children might visualize her ultimate in nakedness as she gnawed at a human thighbone in the depths of the forest. Finally these children might, by their innocence and candour, help her transcend her self-disgust.

  Meanwhile the mother, with renewed tact and kindness, had produced a jug of barley-water, and a dish of fruit ‘from our own garden’. If Mrs Roxburgh preferred to retire, a servant would bring a collation to her room. ‘Do not think, Mrs Roxburgh, that my husband, or anybody, expects of you anything you would not wish. We are so happy to see you alive.’

  After which, Mrs Lovell sailed off in her swell of children.

  ‘You should know, my dear,’ Miss Scrimshaw reminded, ‘that you are something of a heroine, and must pay the price accordingly.’

  ‘I cannot claim to be what I am not.’

  Miss Scrimshaw was too well-bred or too wise to persist.

  Mrs Roxburgh was relieved that, thanks to crape, she had been able to hide her rising distraction until after the spinster had removed herself, when on raising the veil she saw that she had bitten into her lips, and that the blood was running. Soon after, she threw herself upon the bed, a bundle of falsehood and charitable clothes, to give way to what was partly guilt, and partly frustrated passion.

  She resumed control of herself to admit the servant bearing the cold collation on a tray. She was ravenous, and fell to stuffing herself with ham and mutton alternately, until she got the hiccups. It was the all-too-fat meat, together with her own greed and sensuality.

  When at last she slept, she dreamed of a transcendent love which in its bodily form walked just ahead and might ever elude her, at Putney or anywhere else in the actual world.

  She awoke early, refreshed to the extent that she imagined herself on a visit to a friend: Mrs Daintry perhaps, in Gloucestershire? or could it be the visit, much discussed but never paid, to Mrs Aspinall at Hobart Town? She was relieved to dismiss the latter possibility by seeing where she really was.

  She rose and, after exploring her room, decided she must wash herself at the wash-stand put there for that purpose. Soap crude by standards other than colonial made her laugh at least as she lathered herself happily. Yes, she was happy. She would have enjoyed dressing her hair in style had there been enough of it.

  During the night somebody had removed her weeds and laid out in their place a muslin gown patterned with knots of pansies, or heart’s-ease she had heard them called. When she had put on the fresh petticoats she also found, and over them the pretty dress, and finished by tying its sash in cobalt silk, she saw that from being so long without them she had overlooked the stays, and was forced to repair the omission, and make herself seemly.

  Already there were signs of life from other quarters: pots dragged across the surface of a kitchen range, the scent of wood-smoke rising, a man’s voice giving orders. She hoped she might avoid discovery, and actually did, even by children. She made her descent through the Commandant’s garden by natural slopes and artificial terraces, where shaddocks and lemons, bananas and guavas appeared on congenial terms wit
h cabbage- and tea-trees and the stiff cut-outs of native palms. A palm-leaf cut her hand as the result of her looking to it for support.

  On reaching the bottom-most terrace she arrived at a flight of stone steps leading down to the muddy river. A white egret stalking in the shallows rose and flapped into the distance. She heard what could have been the crow-minder’s rattle on the opposite shore. She looked about her, instinctively and furtively. At such an hour she might have succeeded in making her escape had it not been for the numerous innocent kindnesses she had experienced at Moreton Bay.

  Instead she stood awhile enjoying the moist, palpitating air before returning voluntarily to the prison to which she had been sentenced, a lifer from birth.

  Halfway up the slope she encountered a deputation consisting of Kate the eldest Lovell, a white-haired boy, and two younger tottery girls.

  Kate informed her, ‘We’ve come to find you, Mrs Roxburgh, and bring you to breakfast.’ Her speech had the stiffness of formal composition, the others simpering in time with their sister, until at the end of it, everybody burst.

  Mrs Roxburgh again received the impression that they visualized her as the naked survivor, who doubtless the moment before had finished defecating behind a clump of their father’s bamboos.

  So she smoothed her dress before appealing to them, ‘You will breakfast with me, I hope, and give me courage to face the morning.’

  It was too strange for them to contemplate for long.

  One little girl announced very firmly, ‘We had our breakfast.’

  ‘We’ve got our lessons’, the boy told, ‘with Miss Scrim. If we don’t do them our father will whip us.’

  Mrs Roxburgh heard herself, ‘It’s right, surely, to carry out the tasks you’ve been set, and to expect punishment if you don’t.’

  Her too spontaneous moralizing might have depressed her had not the children offered hands and brought her up the last of the slope. They seemed to take sententiousness as much for granted as the surroundings in which they found themselves.

  At the end of the morning, after the school-room had disgorged its rabble of relieved children, Miss Scrimshaw came to Mrs Roxburgh’s door. ‘I should have warned you,’ she said, ‘Captain Lovell is returning early from the Commissariat, and would like the opportunity of talking to you before we dine. He must write the report for His Excellency.’

  ‘I can hardly refuse him, can I?’ Mrs Roxburgh replied.

  ‘That is for you to decide.’ Miss Scrimshaw enjoyed the dependence of others but saw to it that they did not abuse the relationship.

  ‘How have you occupied yourself this morning?’ she asked with less acerbity.

  ‘I have sat and watched the light changing, and listened to the sounds of an unfamiliar house.’

  ‘In that way also, I expect one can learn something.’ Miss Scrimshaw laughed. ‘In any case I shall fetch you when the Commandant arrives.’

  Without expressing active disapproval she left Mrs Roxburgh to her passive pursuits.

  The prisoner had in fact experienced twinges of conscience for her own inactivity. She had been roused from lethargy at one stage by the feeling that somebody was about to pinch or even strike her for not having joined in the search for yams or the chopping of fern- roots. She knew, however, that it was more important to avoid ambush by those endowed with guile. For she heard on and off the footsteps, the voices, of morning callers. Mrs Lovell was entertaining the ladies of the garrison, all of them doubtless kind, and at the same time inquisitive.

  And now the Commandant.

  He received her standing in the centre of a room which might have impressed had she been more impressionable, and had she not suffered the same fate as the furniture, of covering great distances and ending up battered, scratched, dusty, though still with a hint of having enjoyed more pretentious circumstances. There was a smell of must from a worn, dust-impregnated carpet mingling with the scents of citrus and guava which strayed in from beyond the veranda. Bars of sunlight prevented her distinguishing the less aggressive, original design woven into the threadbare carpet, just as gilt grilles would have deterred her had she been inclined to investigate the rows of rigidly aligned books. But dear life, she had never been bookish unless to please others, and the Commandant would not have been pleased. He frowned, and closed his watch. The family dined at three, she had heard. He would have a good two hours in which to torture his victim if he chose.

  At the beginning he was out to charm. ‘I trust you are rested, Mrs Roxburgh?’ He smiled at her from under sandy eyebrows, and manœuvred a heavy, claw-footed chair.

  She thanked her adversary. The chair was so wide across its crackled seat that she now sat stranded in the middle of it, gripping for support at carving which she felt had been polished by hands sweating as nervously as hers.

  If the Commandant was not exactly nervous he appeared more hesitant than one would have expected in a man of his authority. ‘As you must understand, I have my report to write for the Governor, on the circumstances of the wreck, your survival, and recovery. So,’ he sighed, digging an elbow into his desk, ‘I’d be glad to hear your account, if it will not open wounds which have healed. I would like to think that this can be—achieved without causing you unnecessary distress.’ He was looking somewhat congested for the effort, and although he had renewed his smile, it was directed at the blank sheet of paper before him.

  ‘Nobody—nothing—could distress me—not by now, Captain Lovell.’ If her claim was brazen, at least she would not look in his direction; it was the line of his cheek, his rather coarse wrists, which might open old wounds.

  ‘Then’, he said, ‘tell me in your own words what happened.’ She could scarcely accuse him of not being liberal.

  ‘Well,’ she considered, lowering her head, tasting her underlip with her tongue, ‘we were shipwrecked as you know—as you have heard from this other survivor.’ She felt herself perspiring intolerably. ‘What can I tell you,’ she gasped, ‘if you already know?’ It was not an argument to satisfy a man.

  She must not look at the Commandant, but reserve her eyes as weapons in some passage at arms which called for greater subtlety. Instead she sat staring at her own hands held at the level of the cobalt sash, amongst the heart’s-ease, as though she had the stomach-ache, and no matter if he thought her feeble-minded.

  The Commandant was contained by patience. ‘It’s by hearing different versions of the same incident that we arrive at the truth, Mrs Roxburgh, in any court.’

  ‘Oh,’ she cried, ‘I was never in court. Perhaps that’s why I was never sure whether I’d arrived at the truth—whatever the incident, Captain Lovell. For all that, I survived.’

  She would have liked to glance at him, but thought that she might not have the strength.

  She continued, while hanging her head. ‘My husband was killed. Yes, that is truth—a wound which perhaps will never heal. The blood gushing as I pulled the spear from his throat! I shall always remember the glare, the flies.’

  The Commandant was making judicious notes.

  ‘Then the blacks marched the crew away.’ She wet her lips; she could not resist asking what hitherto she had not wished to know, ‘I wonder who is your other survivor?’

  But the Commandant was conducting the court martial of a woman, one as disturbing as she was disturbed. ‘The blacks—did they treat you kindly?’ He spoke with what amounted to delicacy in anyone so exalted, and at the same time, coarse-boned.

  She must not look at him, as she had decided in the beginning.

  ‘Well,’ she began afresh, but paused, ‘they were not unkindly—considering they had been fired on. Oh yes, poor Mr Courtney opened fire—the first mate. Several members of the tribe were killed. So they killed Captain Purdew—and Mr Roxburgh—in retaliation. No,’ she added, ‘I would say they treated me—reasonably—well. Of course they beat and pinched, and held fire-sticks under me, to frighten me into climbing trees for ’possums and maggoty old honey. There was also a disgus
ting child they wanted me to suckle, but I could not. I was dried off. I could not have fed the one I lost at sea.’

  It was the Commandant who was disgusted; she could sense that.

  ‘Oh, I don’t blame the blacks! The child died. It would have done, even had it not been disgusting. So I was not to blame, neither. Now was I?’

  He kept a silence through which she heard the action of his quill.

  ‘No one is to blame, and everybody, for whatever happens.’ Further than that she could not lumber.

  ‘What else?’

  They had arrived at the tortuous part of the journey.

  ‘Oh,’ she raised her head, her throat, in which the veins would be standing out she suspected; she drew in her nostrils until they must be looking all gristle, ‘the black children! The children were not as spiteful as they had been taught by their elders. We would play at purru purru …’

  ‘Purru purru?’ Captain Lovell sounded his gravest, his most official.

  ‘Ball,’ she answered. ‘We used to skip, too. I sang to them.’

  ‘What did you sing?’ It was as though he were determined to commit an indecency.

  She could not remember, so she resolved to forgive him. ‘Some nonsense or other.’ (Not Go, deceiver, go! that was later, surely? and to someone else.) ‘It was while we were crossing to the mainland, and the children were frightened by the rough sea. Yes,’ she decided, ‘it must have been then.’

  ‘And when you arrived?’

  By now it was the middle of the day. The Commandant was sweating; it trickled down over the neck of his tunic, which he was too correct to unhook. Mrs Roxburgh’s muslin was damp; the cobalt sash showed a high-water mark.

  ‘Well, you see, Captain Lovell,’ she hastened to appease him while it was still easy, ‘it was the gathering of the tribes—for corroboree.’