by Rosa Jordan
“I think he was favourably impressed,” James said. “But I would not want to endure this ordeal every night!”
“Neither would I!” Will muttered. “Why, the victuals they served up to us in the barracks when we first come in was three times as hearty as this one!”
“Once I see how things are done at the office, I shall try to arrange to work evenings, thus making it inconvenient to dine with him at his accustomed hour,” James decided. “And you, Will, might want to claim that the crew members are still distraught over the loss of the ship and their mates, and they need you around to steady them. Or something like that.”
Will nodded. Then, as if on cue, both men turned to Mary.
“I’ll use the children as an excuse,” she said. “I can say that, although they’re cheerful enough by day, the night gives rise to nightmares related to the wreck.”
“Perfect,” James approved. “Wanjon doesn’t strike me as a very sociable character, and probably prefers to maintain his established routine. Our excuses will relieve him of any obligation he might feel to dine with us on a regular basis.”
A horse-drawn conveyance—not the cart in which they had been brought earlier, but a fine two-wheeled buggy—rolled up the circular driveway and stopped at the foot of the steps. James climbed in and disappeared into the darkness, leaving Will and Mary to return to their room. Leaving Mary to face the moment she had most dreaded since their arrival.
*
She waited until Mira had said goodnight and she heard the girl’s footsteps fade away. Will was already pulling his boots off. “Damned things put a blister on my heel and I ain’t walked a mile in ‘em yet,” he complained. He looked up at Mary with a gleam in his eye. “How come you’re not here along side me already, woman? Never had such a bed as this, now have we?”
“It does beat that wet sand where we spent our first night in Botany Bay,” Mary smiled. Then sobered. “But you’ll have this bed to yourself, Will, whilst I sleep with the children.”
The boot he had just removed dropped to the floor with a thud. He stared at her in astonishment. “What might you be meaning by that, my girl?”
“I think you understand,” Mary said quietly. “I made half the crossing with a child inside me, gave birth on the high seas, and landed to an uncertain fate with a baby in my arms. I’m not going through that all over again on the way back, not with two already to tend.”
“What about me?” he howled. “Have you given no thought to what I been through without no woman for nigh on to three months?”
“I have.” Mary bowed her head. “And I am truly ashamed to withhold that comfort from you, my lawful wedded husband. But I tell you straight, this trip is using all the strength I’ve got. I can’t be taking on one burden more.”
“Lawful wedded husband! Ha!” He jerked off his second boot, dropped it on the floor, and flung himself onto the bed. “Where’d you get that notion? Ain’t none in Botany Bay ever got wedded in the law! How could they’ve been, with no publishing of the banns?”
He glared a moment, waiting to see how she took the news. Mary flinched, but held her tongue.
“Ain’t you got nothing to say to that?” he demanded.
“I’d say we might leave this aside for now, seeing as how we’ve got to keep up the appearance of man and wife to maintain our freedom. I’d say it’s been a long and wearing day. I’d say you might be wanting to get some rest right now, as you’re due to meet with Bruger soon after sunup.”
With that Mary snuffed the candle and stepped out onto the veranda. The warm night air held the scent of unfamiliar flowers and just a little of the sea’s salty smell. Thoughts ran through her head, so tangled with emotions that she had trouble sorting them out. She did not love Will, had never loved him, but she felt an enormous sense of obligation. Not because they were married—if they were—but because he had saved her on the night of their landing. Was her engineering their escape from the penal colony payment enough for that, or did she owe him the rest of her life? And if she did, what was that life worth to her? For she knew full well that she had refused to lie with him not only to protect herself from pregnancy, but because she preferred another.
As she stood there in the tropical night air with a breeze caressing her skin, another thought surfaced which so surprised her that she turned it over in her mind a few times to determine its validity. She had expected Will to be violently angry, even to the point of taking her by force; an act against which she had no defence. Now, replaying the moment in her head, she realised that although he had been angry, he had accepted her decision with surprising acquiescence. His only retort, really, had been that bit about not being lawfully married. Offensive as it was, it had come as no shock. Back in Botany Bay, Will often bragged that as soon as his time was served, he expected to become a wealthy man by selling fish in the colony. The boast included a declaration that once he acquired some wealth he would be a man about town, not bound to any one woman.
Was this, then, where Will imagined himself to be? That, having vaulted into freedom, he was now poised on the brink of becoming an affluent businessman, if not in Botany Bay, then here in Kupang? In going about the city with Bruger, had those beautiful Indonesian women caught his eye and ignited his fantasy?
Exhausted as she was from the day just ending, which had brought more changes of scenery, more encounters with strangers, more new customs and new experiences than she might have had in a year back in Botany Bay, Mary suddenly felt her emotional turmoil subside. Marriage vows or no, Will’s possible lack of commitment made her own longing to be free seem less shameful. She tuned her ear to the bedroom. Hearing Will’s even breathing, she slipped out of her sarong and slid into the other bed beside her children. Within seconds she was sleeping as soundly as he.
*
Mary woke to a tapping. The children stirred beside her. Will was nowhere to be seen.
“Mevrouw?” It was Mira’s voice, coming from beyond the door.
Mary called out that she was awake and Mira came in, followed by a servant bearing a tray of food. As before, it was carried out to the little table on the veranda.
While the servant took the children in hand and got them into their clothes and to the table to help themselves to whatever caught their fancy, Mira helped Mary do up her sarong and brought a basin of water for her to wash her face.
Mary had known of servants who cleaned, as she herself had done for doctors, but in her experience, personal services such as Mira now insisted on providing were limited to what mothers did for small children, or what one might do for an invalid. She tried, as she had the previous day, to persuade Mira to let her do for herself, but Mira would have none of it.
At last, in a small struggle for the comb over who should do her hair, Mira cried out in frustration, “Mevrouw, please! Gouverneur Wanjon orders me do for you as for his wife! One who disobeys our gouverneur is punished!”
It was only then that Mary understood that the Indonesian girl was acting under orders. And that Wanjon had—“A wife?” Mary echoed. “Where is this wife?”
“Ah, the fever took her three years ago,” Mira explained. “Gouverneur Wanjon have no more wife.”
Thereafter Mary did not protest the personal services which Mira felt bound to provide. Having no knowledge of the lives of the upper classes, she did not know it was commonplace for ladies to require such attentions of a maid and, had anyone told her, she would not have believed it. Personally, she found the fussing excessive, and supposed it to be the result of Mira having been trained to look after an invalid woman. But she did not want to interfere with the girl’s training or get her in trouble with her employer, so once again she adopted the compliance exhibited by her contented children, and let Mira do as she wished.
What Mira wished that day was for Mary to come with her to town to purchase fabric to make new
clothes for the children. This Mary was thrilled to do, for her children had never owned any garment made from fabric not previously used, first for transporting supplies to the colony, then as clothing for one of their parents. Only when that had gone to rags would the material be patched together into some sort of garment for one of the children.
As Mira guided her along the bustling commercial district, Mary’s head swivelled from side to side, eyes wide with astonishment at all the things on offer. When at last they entered a fabric store and Mira told her to select what she wanted, Mary simply shook her head and said, “You must choose, Mira. I cannot.”
This delighted Mira, who conducted the whole transaction in her own language. When Mary asked about payment, Mira explained that “the King of England would pay.” This was her understanding of charges drawn on the Crown on behalf of the shipwreck survivors.
As they walked further along the street, Mary heard her name called. She turned and saw Cox smiling from the doorway of a carpentry shop, a dusting of sawdust down the front of his new shirt.
“Don’t you look the part of a native!” he greeted her. “But for that crown o’ golden hair wound around your head.” He lowered his voice, and said, “I’m to get a little pay for this work above and beyond my keep. I’m thinking to buy my Florie one of them kind of gowns.” He gestured to the sarongs Mary and Mira were wearing, his eyes settling on Mira. “She’s about her size, wouldn’t you say?”
“Yes,” Mary agreed, and explained to Mira, “Cox has a wife the same size as you. He wants to take her a dress like yours.”
“Kain panjang,” Mira corrected, beaming at the
compliment. “You take her two, one for working wear, one for holidays.”
“Right you are,” Cox laughed, and added, with a wink at Mary, “Can’t you see my girl on her way to church of a Sunday morning, rigged out in one of these South Seas outfits?”
Cox was called back into the shop, and the women walked on. Mira pointed to an upstairs window in the largest building on the street and said, “Mr. Brown, he working there.”
Mary looked up and saw James’s head bent over his work, but he did not glance out the window to notice her passing.
Mary told Mira that, because the wreck had happened at night, the children were having nightmares and she did not wish to leave them after dark. She asked Mira to explain this to the governor, and apparently she did, for that day and each day thereafter, meals were brought from the kitchen and served in their quarters. Mary did not see Will from dawn to dark, and presumed he was taking his meals with the men in the barracks. By the time he came in at night, she was in bed with the children, either asleep or pretending to be.
Once Mary had finished sewing decent clothing for the children—sewing being a skill her mother had taught her well—she spent a good deal of time with them out of doors, letting them run about, climb trees, and frolic on the lawn. She occasionally saw Wanjon observing them from an upstairs balcony, as he had on the day of their arrival. He seemed to confine himself to the opposite wing of the house from where she was, leaving it only when a carriage was brought round to take him into town. Thus, without going out of her way to avoid him, a whole week passed when she but occasionally glimpsed him.
She became increasingly comfortable in her new
surroundings, bothered only by the lack of anything to do. Toward the end of the first week she discovered the kitchen and took to spending a good deal of time there, curious to see how the cook, aided by Siti, prepared her exquisite concoctions, often with ingredients which Mary had never seen before.
On one such day, as Mary sat in a corner of the kitchen with Emanuel in her lap, eating from a plate of delicacies the cook had given her to share with the children, she heard suppressed laughter and conspiratorial whispers approaching from outside. A moment later Pip and Mira burst into the kitchen. Mira snatched a fried shrimp from a plate at the cook’s elbow and popped it into Pip’s mouth. He grabbed her by the wrist and pretended to eat her fingers as well, causing them both to dissolve into giggles. They did not notice Mary sitting in a dimly-lit corner, perhaps because they had eyes only for each other. Mira had just turned to steal another shrimp for Pip, when Wanjon’s voice came through the open door.
“Acht, Mira, there you are! And you, Cabin Boy, you are here too? Vhat do you vant?”
It was a question that Mary might have asked, had she had the opportunity. She held her breath, hoping Pip would have a good answer. His frightened look and suddenly stiff posture suggested that he might not. But she had underestimated the boy.
Drawing up to his whole small height, Pip said, “I was wanting to help in your kitchen, Sir. I am very good about the house, Sir.”
“Ve don’t use vhite boys for such vork,” Wanjon said bluntly.
“I can do most anything,” Pip persisted. “If my captain was here he would vouch for me. Why, I did everything about his cabin, and in the galley, too, whatever he bade me do, Sir, on account of what I don’t know how to do, I’m fair quick to learn.”
“Is this so?” Wanjon said. Then, without waiting for Pip to answer, he said, “You make a good pot of tea, maybe?”
“Oh, aye, sir, I can make tea,” Pip fairly squeaked with relief. “That I can do.”
“Vell, this my Siti has not mastered, not like the English. Mevrouw Bryant, I think she vould like good tea.” To Mira he said, “As the hour approaches, you will ask Mevrouw Bryant to join me for tea. If she accept, you, Cabin Boy, make this tea, and Mira, you vill mind the kinder.”
“Aye, aye, Sir! Right away, Sir!” Pip’s voice followed the sound of Wanjon’s steps echoing away.
It was only then, as Charlotte dashed forward and flung herself around one of Pip’s legs, and Emanuel toddled over to grab the other, that Pip realised Mary was in the room.
“Oh, Miss Mary!” he exulted, picking up Emanuel and giving him a great hug. “Did you hear that? Can you show me how to make tea in the right English way? I never done such a thing, and me mum died so long ago, I don’t remember how she did it.”
Mary rose, laughing, from the bench where she’d been sitting. “The same as Siti makes it, only be sure the water is boiling hard. Rinse the pot and the cups, too, with boiling water. Then put in the leaves and boiling water, and serve it that very minute. It’s waiting about that turns the tea cool and bitter.”
“He’ll think I knew all along!” Pip crowed. Again his hand went out to touch Mira as if her presence was some sort of miracle, and physical touch was needed to confirm that she was not a mirage.
Tea was served on the upstairs veranda about an hour before sunset. Mary had dreaded again sitting across the table from the governor, and her apprehension grew when she realised that it would only be the two of them. But conversation proved less difficult than she expected. She adopted the child’s trick of asking questions, which had worked so well with Captain Smit, thereby guiding the conversation toward subjects which did not require her to reveal or invent a great deal about herself and her companions. Wanjon responded to her questions with long-winded commentaries on the history of the Dutch East India company, and descriptions of various places he had served. Just prior to coming to Kupang, he had been in Batavia, which he called “a virtual cesspool of disease.” Mary knew from Mira that it was his wife’s ill health that had caused him to petition the company for a transfer to the more healthful city of Kupang. But either the move came too late or the illness was too strong, for here his wife had been buried.
As clouds along the horizon flamed with sunset colours, Wanjon rose and invited Mary to stand at the railing and watch the sun slip into the sea. The view from the balconied veranda was indeed breathtaking.
“’Tis like a prayer,” Mary murmured. “If there be such a thing as a prayer without words.”
Wanjon frowned, perplexed. “In what way does it resemble prayer?�
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When Mary made the statement she had not been prepared to put the notion into words, and struggled to find a few which approximated what she meant. “Well, there’s the feeling of gratitude that wells up in one’s heart, that such beauty exists. And a sense of wanting to make oneself worthy. Is this not something of what we’re meant to feel in prayer?”
Wanjon did not respond, but turned again to stare at the multicoloured sky. Mary could not know what he was thinking, and hoped she hadn’t offended him. It seemed she had not for, when he adjourned their hour of sociability, he invited her to join him on the morrow at the same hour. Thus began a ritual of afternoon tea several times a week. It was stressful for Mary at first, but became less so as the weeks wore on.
They had been in Kupang almost two months when Will came clumping into their room one evening a little earlier than usual, just before Mary snuffed the candle. He did not greet her, but went directly to his own bed and began to undress. With his back to her, he asked, “You got any notion where that darky’s got to?”
“Who? Bados?” Mary responded in surprise. “Why, didn’t he show up to go out on the boat today?”
“Not today nor for a whole week gone by,” Will informed her.
“A week!” Mary exclaimed. “Has no one seen him about town?”
“Would I be asking you if they had?” Will retorted grumpily. “Cox is right there in the middle of everything, and James can see for a good long ways from where he sits. Said last they seen of him was more’n a week ago. Not that they been looking. Figured him to be out on the boat with Matey and Scrapper and Luke and me.”
“Does he not sleep in the barracks with the other men?”
“Nay, not from the beginning. The Hollanders wouldn’t have a black amongst them, so he was put somewhere else, out with some natives. Don’t none of them speak English, nor the Hollanders either, but for Bruger, and I didn’t want to say nothing to him. Not yet, anyway.”
