A Room Made of Leaves

by Kate Grenville

  FIRST COUSIN TO THE TRUTH

  The immediate danger of my husband setting off a conflagration with Captain Nepean seemed to have receded. But there were two fiery men involved in the situation, and now that the captain was stationed in Sydney again, there would be few hopes of advancement for the Macarthurs unless both flames were dampened.

  On board the Neptune I had regretted not having any direct dealings with Mr Trail or Captain Nepean. Had I been able to judge for myself how things stood, I might have been able to influence matters for the better. A few of the right words at the right moment might have been all it took.

  Sydney was too small a place for people to avoid each other, so my path frequently crossed Captain Nepean’s. He bowed, looking somewhere over my head, and moved on. I greeted him as warmly as his rapidly retreating back allowed, wondering each time whether I could find a pretext that would force him to stop and exchange a few words. None had ever suggested itself until now, but my salon offered a possibility.

  – Why Captain Nepean, I exclaimed, all innocence, next time I saw him. On Wednesday a few officers will be gathering in my parlour and Mr Worgan has most obligingly undertaken to entertain us with some musical items. Will you not join us, sir, for a pleasant afternoon?

  He was forced to stop, and courtesy required that he look at me as I made my speech. I was somewhat flurried and hasty in my anxiety to get his attention, but threw my most appealing smile at his wariness. I watched him consider the invitation, backwards and forwards, inside and out, his shapely, rather feminine mouth pursed.

  – Mr Macarthur expressly desired I should invite you, sir, I said. He wished it most particularly.

  A bald-faced lie, but Mr Macarthur was not present to deny it.

  – After all, sir, you and I were born on the banks of the same lovely river, and whenever there is a gathering at our house there is always a toast to the Tamar.

  It was true that Captain Nepean and I had been born by the Tamar, and so had Mr Macarthur. But no one at my salon had ever thought to toast the river. That was my own dainty invention.

  – It would be an honour, sir, to have you join us in celebrating our home.

  Captain Nepean was nobody’s fool. While I was uttering this elegant speech, he was making his own calculations, concluding perhaps that it was better to have Mr Macarthur flattering than accusing. Wise fellow that he was, he pretended to let my charm work its magic. The shapely mouth finally smiled.

  That evening I told Mr Macarthur of the meeting on the bridge.

  – Captain Nepean asked after your health, I said. Very sincerely and with great consideration.

  Since he had suffered that African fever, Mr Macarthur had been prey to episodes of painful joints and digestive upsets, so my embellishment struck the right note.

  – He recommended the sweet tea, I said, and was most concerned to see you recover.

  Whether Mr Macarthur believed me or not, he saw the sense in the fiction. When Captain Nepean arrived the next Wednesday afternoon, I made sure to spin at least one of the inventions into a truth.

  – To the banks of the Tamar, I called out, lifting my teacup and meeting Captain Nepean’s eye so he was obliged to join the toast.

  – The banks of the Tamar, everyone echoed, Captain Nepean as loud as anyone, and he turned to the man next to him—Mr Macarthur, as it happened–and the two men touched the rims of their cups together in mock ceremony.

  Across the room I caught the eye of Captain Tench, whose eyelid dropped for a fleeting instant. Under cover of the general hubbub he mouthed across the room to me. Was it Well done?

  From then on, at least on the surface, it was as if the poisonous events on the Neptune had never taken place. Watching the two men chuckling at each other’s wit, I reminded myself that on the surface was all that was needed. If the surface could hold, like a brimming glass of water kept together by its own density, perhaps Mr Macarthur would at last leave the idea of a court martial behind, and our fortunes might prosper.

  I wrote to Mother, in a way that approached second or third cousin to the truth, that Captain Nepean was truly a good-hearted man. Oh, beware that word truly! I did not scruple from adding that He has, I believe, a great friendship for Mr Macarthur. Can a claim be called a falsehood if it is hedged around with I believe?

  Behind that belief was calculation. The streams of connection ran deep in Devon and Cornwall. If my mother was convinced that Captain Nepean had a great friendship for her son-in-law, that rumour could pass up and down the banks of the Tamar. It could reach the ears of old Mr Nepean of Saltash, who might then relay it to his son Evan, sitting behind some splendid spread of mahogany in Whitehall. Evan Nepean would accept it as nothing less than the truth, and might make a mental note that this Macarthur must be a good fellow, and should be promoted forthwith. To give wings to the rumour, I told Mother that, should Mr Macarthur gain a promotion, our thoughts will be in some measure turned again towards ‘Old England’.

  But why the elaboration of syntax, the coy inverted commas? Looking at the page now, I see that the idea of England was coming to seem like a story that I knew about, could name the parts of, loved, but did not quite believe. The inverted commas were a way of removing myself from the place. They made the idea of England something jocular. Even ironic.

  THE BEST KIND OF SECRET

  Captain Tench loved to nose out things that were not obvious to the eye. He would no doubt add them to his book in due course, but he had a more immediate use for them: as a currency that he paid out to chosen confidants. He had read my husband’s nature well, and knew what kind of coin bought his friendship.

  In a quiet corner of my salon one afternoon just before our first Christmas he sat with my husband and myself. A ship had recently arrived with supplies, so that, until the colony’s stores ran low again, our cups contained actual Ceylon, and there was even a dish of scones, though no butter and little jam. The brief respite from famine gave the afternoon a festive air. Captain Tench glanced around to signal that he was about to share a secret. Mr Macarthur leaned forward.

  – I happened to see the governor yesterday, Tench said.

  – Yes? my husband said.

  Like every good storyteller, Tench would not be hurried.

  – We spoke of this and that, he said.

  He smiled and gestured a greeting at someone on the other side of the room. Was he enjoying keeping Mr Macarthur on tenterhooks? His eyes met mine. Oh, you tease, Captain Tench!

  – The governor was not well, he said. But you know how valiantly he conceals his weakness.

  – I do, Mr Macarthur agreed. And your business with him? Was it satisfactory?

  – Oh yes, Tench said indifferently.

  Mr Macarthur cleared his throat and Tench saw he had better tease no longer.

  – I suppose you have heard about Mrs Brooks, he said, lowering his voice.

  – Mrs Brooks! No, what should I have heard about Mrs Brooks?

  Mr Macarthur was torn between his annoyance at being ignorant of a fact that was, from Tench’s tone, common knowledge, and his hunger to be enlightened.

  – Oh well, only that, how should I say it, she is…

  – She is what? Come, man, out with it!

  – Mrs M, Tench said, smiling at me, you will have to forgive me, I seem to have got myself somewhere that a lady might not…

  – Oh, Captain Tench, I said, as eager as my husband to hear about Mrs Brooks. Do not be concerned! It is a well-known fact about me that I am inclined now and then to suffer a sudden fit of deafness. In fact I feel one coming on at this very moment.

  We were all smiling now, Tench looking at me with appreciation.

  – Well, only that Mrs Brooks is by way of being companion to the governor, he said. And since Mrs M is suffering her fit of deafness, I can speak plain: she has been the governor’s inamorata these last seven or eight years.

  Mr Macarthur was avid for more.

  – There is a wife, Tench said. B
ack in Hampshire. But not suited, it seems.

  Was it my imagination, or was he pointedly not glancing at me?

  – Mrs Brooks is the wife of the bosun of the governor’s ship, he said. So there is nothing strange about her being more or less everywhere the governor goes.

  – Oh, our saintly governor! Mr Macarthur said. I had wondered, of course. Whether perhaps there was some convict lass or other.

  – Indeed, Tench said. Any thinking man must have asked himself that question. The governor could have his pick, but would risk scandal. He has chosen wisely, would you not agree, in having a comfort who can travel with him in plain sight?

  – Oh, canny! Mr Macarthur said. A wily fellow, our esteemed governor. And what of Brooks the bosun? How is that managed? In the usual way?

  Made the finger-rubbing-thumb gesture.

  – That I cannot tell you, Tench said, smiling, so it was impossible to be sure whether he could not tell, or would not. But certainly Whitehall is not privy to this facet of His Excellency’s domestic arrangements.

  He knew my husband well. Knew that the way to make an ally of him was to share with him the kind of gift he valued above any other: a secret that could destroy another man. They chuckled together about the situation as if it were the most amusing thing imaginable.

  How dare they snigger! Without a companion, anyone in the governor’s position must have collapsed from strain and loneliness. The men in Whitehall might not have been able to name that companion. But they must have guessed that she existed, those masters of the blind eye. They produced masses of paper that appeared to nail every detail of New South Wales, yet as far as all that paper was concerned, Deborah Brooks was nothing more than wife to the bosun of the Sirius. The future will not have any inkling about Mrs Brooks, except that I am telling you now.

  Her situation was not an enviable one. Mistress of an important man was a sleight of hand that condemned her to live in a lonely netherworld somewhere between lady and disgrace. But there might be compensations. The frisson of the double life she and the governor were obliged to live must keep the affection between them at a pleasurable rolling boil. I had a pang of envy, remembering that moment I had caught, of the governor glancing at Mrs Brooks as she served him at table: that softening, that hardly perceptible warming of his lean features.

  Oh, what it must be like to have a man look at you with such warmth and love that, try as he might, he could not keep his feelings hidden!

  RISING TO THE SPARK

  Like my husband, Tench clung by his fingernails to the status of gentleman thanks to his officer’s rank, a good-enough education, and gallant manners, when rumour had it that he was the son of a dancing-master. Only he, it seemed, in this place of meanness and malice, remained a friend of all. Even Mr Macarthur had a good word for him. I thought of him as some fluid insinuating creature, a ferret or an otter, with his delight in his own sinuous being, and the way he could twist and flow out of anything. Something in me rose to the quicksilver quality in Tench: sly, quick with innuendo, every look and utterance lingering and teasing. In his company I felt myself to be large of spirit, amusing, warmly alive along every vein.

  On the afternoon of our first Christmas Eve in New South Wales, with Worgan hammering away at the piano with such effect that two people in the corner by the fireplace could converse in private, I laughed freely, frankly, pleasurably, at some witty bit of nonsense Tench had come out with. Our eyes met, his very brown, full of warmth and fun, and I allowed myself to wonder what it would be like to be with him, woman to his man.

  He was not handsome, his face too narrow, his chin with its black beard-shadow too weak, his eyes too close together. But the flicker and dash of his spirit drew me. With someone like him, I knew, I would be a different woman: less cautious, less conscious of every word and gesture, more reckless, more inclined simply to enjoy each moment.

  Tench caught the unguarded glance. I saw the same question in his eye. What would it be like?

  I was rehearsing some repartee for Tench’s banter, but Mr Worgan was all at once beside us, somewhat flushed. He touched me on the elbow and when, interrupted in mid-word, I glanced at him—with irritation, it must be said—I saw that he was meeting my gaze in an insistent way.

  – Mrs Macarthur, he said, may I call on you to turn the pages for me? Captain Collins has requested Lovers’ Garland, and I fear I will not do it justice without an assistant.

  Dolt that I was, I must have looked put out, but thank the Lord I was alert enough to see his eyes move, and I saw what he was warning me of: Mr Macarthur watching me with Tench.

  – I would be delighted, Mr Worgan, I exclaimed, left Tench discourteously without a word, and stood beside the piano to turn Mr Worgan’s pages—which he could perfectly well do by himself—and then allowed him to show off my accomplishments by sitting at the instrument and picking my way through Foote’s Minuet.

  For the rest of the afternoon I made sure the roomful of men was between me and Captain Tench. Still, I remained conscious of him, knew exactly where in the room he was standing, and knew that he was equally aware of me.

  JACK BODDICE

  On the day of the first salon of the new year Captain Tench required my advice on the matter of repairing his silk cravat. We stood close by the window together, holding the worn little pretext up to the light.

  – Mrs M, he said, I feel I must tell you something.

  He laid the cravat on the window ledge and smoothed it with his finger, the satin obediently rippling under his touch.

  – Tell me something, Captain Tench? What can you mean?

  Was he about to press his case here and now? With my husband on the other side of the room? What would I say, if he suggested whatever a man who had glimpsed willingness might suggest?

  – Something you should be aware of, Mrs M. Something of significance. To you.

  I felt myself colouring up. I was afraid to have him go on, but hungry for it too. What would it be like? Perhaps as it had been all that lifetime ago with Bridie: two people pleasuring themselves and each other with affection and humour.

  He watched my fluster and I caught the amusement in his eye. In a blaze of understanding I saw that this was what he had intended. As I had watched him toying with Mr Macarthur, so he was toying with me.

  My fluster and willingness were snuffed out in an instant. Tench held out no affection and humour. He was nothing more than a flirt.

  – So what is it that you must tell me, sir?

  He caught the change in my tone.

  – Only the name the people have for your husband, Mrs M, he said. Which, God willing, he will never learn.

  – A name? A name for my husband?

  – Jack Boddice, he said in a whispering hiss. Behind his back they call him Jack Boddice.

  I had braced myself not to show any surprise, but I could not stop my face slackening in nasty glee. They were no fools, those people who watched us. Apprenticed to a corset maker. I had never believed that old rumour but, true or not, the barb could not have been more precisely sharpened to puncture the fragile pride of the draper’s son.

  My glee was nothing more than an instant, smothered as soon as sparked, because I saw that Tench had set me a test. How loyal was I to my husband? Some hint of aha! about him told me that he had glimpsed that flash of unguarded glee. If he had asked that question, he had his answer.

  Captain Tench was more than a flirt. He was dangerous.

  – Oh, I am shocked, I said. How vile they are!

  I did not only mean those who so cleverly skewered my husband. I had looked on Tench as a friend. Had allowed myself the weakness of that private question. What would it be like? Now there was a sickened hollowness where warmth had been.

  – Shocking indeed, Mrs M, he said, but watching me, waiting for more. I had to step backwards as quickly as possible, away from the dangerous moment where I had exposed myself.

  – And am I Mrs Boddice, I said, or have I earned a name of my o
wn? And you, sir? What name do they have for you?

  – Oh, who knows? Tench said with a laugh. Who knows what you and I are to them?

  You and I. There was an intimacy in that casual pairing of us together. If Jack Boddice had been the first test, you and I was the second.

  All at once Mrs Macarthur needed to attend to her duties as hostess, bustle out to the table, call for more hot water, splash tea about into whatever cup was close by, call praise to Mr Worgan for his playing, demand an encore.

  Jack Boddice. I wished Tench had kept that to himself. The words were in my mind now. Their presence was a dangerous crack, creating weakness where I needed strength. It was a weakness that Tench had brought about, and deliberately.

  As I sat, smiling, patting my knee in time with Worgan’s new tune, I looked anywhere but at Tench. What would it be like? I was amazed that I had ever had that thought. It had flickered, like a sheet of lightning shifting through cloud. Now it had passed. I did not want Tench.

  But the flicker had been there. A great deal had seemed to die in me, in the time that had passed since Mr Macarthur and I had looked at each other along a tube of air in the Bridgerule parsonage. Now, in wonder, I realised that it had not altogether died, only gone into hiding.

  A SECRET JEST

  Captain Nepean had only ever been a temporary commander of the New South Wales Corps. The more senior officer, a Major Grose, had been delayed in England, but in the new year his ship sailed into Sydney Cove and he took up his duties.

  Mr Macarthur lost no time in inviting him to his wife’s salon. Mrs Brown and Hannaford were put to it to make everything shine that could be shined, everything straightened that could be straightened, and to hide whatever could be neither straightened nor shined. Sullivan swept the front path with a great show of sighing and putting a hand to the small of his back, was made to rake the yard at the back in case the new commander needed the privy.