Mr Macarthur was in no hurry. There was nothing more patient than my husband with his mind made up. There was something not quite human about it, like a hawk hovering, hovering, hovering, only its cold eyes watching.
A HAPPY WOMAN
Writing home to Bridie I was conscious that she was still unmarried. She had hinted in one of her letters that there had been a person of interest to her after Captain Moriarty, but evidently nothing had come of it. To write of what has been would afford you no pleasure, she wrote, and occasion me some regret. She referred to herself as an old maid, as though she had given up all hope. This caused me some anguish for my friend, like myself in her middle twenties, with the cul-de-sac of spinsterhood rushing up at her.
In my letters I had never wanted to emphasise the difference in our circumstances, and of course there was no way to tell her privately how little there was to envy in my marriage, so I had written nothing on the subject of my life as Mrs Macarthur. I had hoped that the silence might itself be a hint to her of what I could not say. But that had caused trouble. Mr Macarthur had seized a letter and flown into a rage that it was so full of news about the settlement, its geography and economy—hardly the letter of a wife at all!
Next time I took a different tack.
I have hitherto in my letters forborne to mention Mr Macarthur’s name, I wrote, lest it might appear in me too ostentatious.
Oh, you ingenious woman, Mrs Macarthur!
No two people on earth can be happier than we are, I went on. Mr Macarthur is instructive and cheerful as a companion and universally respected for the integrity of his character.
Like so many of Mr Macarthur’s own utterances, this one had that fleck of truth. Yes, he was instructive. Wearyingly, obnoxiously so, instructing me in the matter of ships’ bonds, of the value of a Spanish dollar, of the amount of water in rum that would alert a drinker to its dilution. I hoped no two people on earth would signal my real feelings to Bridie. Surely, knowing me so well, she would recognise that hyperbole as excessive to the point of irony. As for universally respected for the integrity of his character—well, that was fiction pure and simple.
Still, though marriage was no bliss for me, it was not a cul-de-sac. My life would surely offer me corners to turn, and although they might turn for better or for worse, there was a degree of freedom—or at least of elasticity—in having those corners in one’s future. There could be no corners for an ageing spinster in Bridgerule.
My dearest friend, I wrote impulsively, abate a few of your scruples, and marry. Few of our friends, when I married, thought that either of us had taken a prudent step. I was considered indolent and inactive: Mr Macarthur too proud and haughty for our humble fortune or expectation.
Then I saw that I had been overly frank. Between the lines the truth could be read: I was telling Bridie that even a bad marriage might be better than no marriage. Quickly—I remember the way my pen hastened over the page—I went on to smother that truth.
Judge then, my friend, if I ought not to consider myself a happy woman.
Oh, you poor dear woman! Reading it now, I see that I was determined to write the plain lie: I am a happy woman, yet I could not quite make myself do it. There it is, in that ought and that complication of negatives: the truth peeping unbidden through clouds of falsity.
I plunged on. Whenever you marry, look out for good sense in a husband. You would never be happy with a person inferior to yourself in point of understanding.
This letter was becoming too complicated in its purposes: I was writing for Bridie’s eyes, but I was writing for Mr Macarthur’s too, and my grasp on the two-headed truth I was trying to tell was slipping. In the course of a line or two, I see that I talked myself around, from urging Bridie to marry at all costs, to warning her of the misery of being yoked to the wrong man.
Watching my instructive and cheerful husband’s mouth soften as he read, I saw that he was right in his view that it was not possible to lay flattery on too thick. Had a pang of something like pity, that there was some need in him so great that it made him as willing to believe as any of the men he mocked. He was armoured in every way. Yet there it was, exposed to the air: the emptiness in him that craved to be seen and heard and yes, loved.
He did not complain again. And it did no harm to boast. All of Bridgerule would read the letter, and if any of them still spoke of me with pity, let this lying letter silence them.
PART FOUR
SOME BASIC STARS
When Mr Dawes finally appeared in my parlour in the hot days of our first January, it was clearly because Tench had waylaid him in the street and more or less dragged him in.
– May I introduce our resident genius, Mrs M, Tench exclaimed. Our scholarly stargazer, Mr Dawes the astronomer. Mr Dawes, may I introduce Mrs John Macarthur, our very own Madame d’Epinay.
Mr Dawes was frowning in response to Tench’s raillery and looking about with an air of desperation. I was going to ask who Madame d’Epinay was—the quickest way to tell Mr Dawes that I did not see myself in any such company—when Tench spoke again in his amiable, amused way.
– Mrs M has expressed a great desire to learn some easy astronomy, Dawes, he said. I told her, I had no doubt but that you would be delighted to give her some instruction in a few basic matters, stars, planets and so on.
Mr Dawes shot me a startled look.
– Delighted, he said. I would be delighted, Mrs Macarthur. Some basic stars, yes, I would be delighted. Yes.
In spite of so many words of delight, it was easy to see that yes was purely for lack of immediate reason to say no. In Tench’s mouth my wish sounded frivolous, even insulting, and I tried to explain.
– I am a woman of scanty education, Mr Dawes, but great curiosity, I said. Here we are, in a place so strange that the very stars are unfamiliar. It would seem a missed opportunity to remain ignorant of them.
All the same, I was wondering if the idea of astronomy was a mistake.
He slid me an oblique glance at the word curiosity. What train of thought took place I could not guess, and what he might have said will remain a blank, because Tench did not wait.
– That is settled then, he said. Next Thursday, let us say, in the afternoon, for the first lesson! And I will be most interested to hear what progress you make, Mrs Macarthur, so Dawes, do not fail to inform me.
Mr Dawes raised a hand like an awkward benediction, murmured something I did not catch, turned away and was gone.
– Never think our Mr Dawes is impolite, Mrs M, Tench said. But his orbit is a fraction eccentric as it passes through our merely human sphere.
THIS WAS NOT DEVON
The Thursday afternoon following, Mrs Brown and Hannaford and Edward and myself set off as usual towards the top of the western ridge. Arrived there, we stood in the wind blowing in from the sea, looking down at where that faint foot-track through the bushes made its way towards the unseen observatory. I had a sudden compelling hunger to be alone, as I had never been, in this mighty landscape.
– I wonder, Mrs Brown, if it might be best for you and Mr Hannaford to stay here with Edward, I said. You will still be in sight of the settlement.
The truth—my longing to be alone in this broad airy place—seemed too eccentric to be spoken, but Mrs Brown’s wishes were travelling in the same direction as mine.
– Yes, Mrs Macarthur, she said, the track will be too rough for the lad’s little legs.
No rougher than the track we had just climbed, we both knew.
– And he is heavy to carry, when he gets too tired to walk back up, I said.
It was not a difficult matter to carry the child. Hannaford would swing him up onto his shoulders as easily as putting on a cloak. But between Mrs Brown and myself we had put together some semblance of a story.
It would never happen in Devon, but this was not Devon.
I took only a few steps before there was a sudden falling-away of everything familiar. I knew Mrs Brown and Hannaford were barely out of sigh
t. But it was as if I were the only person on the surface of the globe. Human life receded into irrelevance. Here I was in the kingdom of leaves, rocks, wind. The branches of those barbaric trees tossed and twirled as if in play, birds swooped from one to another, and down below, in a tangle of bays and inlets, the stately waters of Port Jackson glittered and glinted.
I stepped down the track from rock to rock, unbalanced, ungainly, as if in a dance with this landscape for which I had not yet learned the steps. I felt it watching me, a woman clumsy in too many layers of clothing, her boots catching on stones, her skirt snagging on low whippy branches. I paused on a ledge of rock, taking great gulps of that roistering blast of clean air, feeling as if I might be lifted clear off the ground and carried away.
Each step revealed a new marvel: a view through the bushes of a slice of harbour rough and blue like lapis, a tree with bark of such a smooth pink fleshiness that you could expect it to be warm, an overhang of rock with a fraying underside, soft as cake, that glowed yellow. The wind brought with it the salt of the ocean and the strange spicy astringency given off by the shrubs and flowers. There was an almost frightening breadth and depth and height to the place, alive with openness and the wild energy of breeze and trees and the crying gulls and the brilliant water. Alone, a speck of human in a place big enough to swallow me, I looked about with eyes that seemed open for the first time.
It was not a long track, but it was a journey into another landscape, another climate, another country.
Down the slope, facing around somewhat to the west so it was out of sight of the settlement, was a clearing in which stood a strange construction: a hut like any other of the township, but with a stubby tower attached to one end, its lopsided pointed roof covered with canvas that puckered and gaped around a shadowed vertical slit.
And there was Mr Dawes. He was wearing a checked shirt and a pair of sailor’s trousers, turned up around the calves. He was stirring a bucket of something—whitewash, I saw as I came closer—and had a big coarse brush in his hand. The canvas gleamed with preparatory wet and he was about to apply the whitewash. He had clearly forgotten the arrangement Tench had made. He would not want a visit from an idle woman who had toyed with the idea of wanting some instruction in a few easy stars. I stopped, intending to go back the way I had come and return another time.
But he must have seen me out of the corner of his eye, for he looked up and I was obliged to come forward. I bustled down the slope as quickly as I could, blundering in my thick boots, hoisting my skirt and petticoats clear of the bushes and wiry grass. Alone with him here I felt a shyness. We both stared up at the strange canvas structure.
– The carpenter grizzled, Mr Dawes said. The awkward angles, you see, necessitated by the peak of the roof. Needing to be off centre to allow for observations at the zenith. And the difficulty involved in causing it to rotate for the measurement at the azimuth. While at the same time needing to be able to be closed in inclement weather, to protect the instruments. Which are of course the most precious and fragile objects in this place, possibly the most precious and fragile on this entire continent of New Holland, whatever its extent, which of course is a dimension as yet unknown.
At last he stopped, having been unable, it seemed, to stem the flow of words that I could see functioned by way of wall or barrier. But now they had abandoned him.
– A good carpenter likes to make a tidy job, I said, trying to offer rescue, but it was not the most promising entry to conversation.
– Some instruction on the matter of the heavenly bodies, Captain Tench mentioned, he said.
His lack of enthusiasm was so palpable that I was angry at Tench, angrier with myself for having got myself and Mr Dawes into this awkward thing. I might have simply retreated from any thought of learning about the stars, but I could not bear the weeks going on and on with not enough to think about.
He glanced at the whitewash in the pail. The stuff smelled foul and had a nasty grey sheen. I guessed that for tallow Mr Dawes had had to use fat from the rancid salt pork or beef that was the colony’s only meat. The whitewash was ready, the canvas wet so the stuff would stick. He wished me gone. If he was forced to stand here playing gentleman to my lady, the canvas would dry and he would have to wet it all over again.
I had words prepared, but they were not the words that came out.
– You are much in demand, Mr Dawes.
He smiled slightly, his teeth crooked in a way that made his smile look rueful when perhaps rue was not intended.
– And here I am, with one more demand, I said.
His eyes went back to the canvas, the pail of whitewash.
– Yes, he said. If I can be of service.
– I see you are at the vital moment here, Mr Dawes, I said. I will come back another time.
I had schooled myself for years in calmness, and was surprised that now I was all awry, snapping my skirt off where it had got caught on a twig and stretched out beside me like some ridiculous flag, revealing those workmanlike boots. I turned, in a flurry now to be gone, speaking over my shoulder in a way that in another situation would have been rude.
– Another time, Mr Dawes, a thousand pardons.
I felt him watching me go, unsteady with haste, reaching out for a bush that turned out to be sharper than it looked.
I BLUSH AT MY ERROR
That word—azimuth—had frightened me. It told me that I might be biting off more than I could chew. But by insisting, Tench had made it as awkward to retreat as to go on.
The next Thursday, Mrs Brown and I did not need to construct any flimsy coracle of story. We arrived at the open space, she took off her cap and sat on the rock shaped for the human behind, Edward ran to the cleft where the twigs he had played with last time were still lying on the rock, and Hannaford got out his pipe.
I took the track slowly, learning the dance. There was plenty of time. All the time in this new world.
Mr Dawes heard me coming, came to the door of the hut, rolling down the sleeves of his shirt and checking the button at the neck.
– Good afternoon, he called, his voice cracking as though it was some while since he had spoken. Good afternoon, Mrs Macarthur, welcome to the observatory.
This time I had my words ready.
– Mr Dawes, you are a busy man, I said, and it would be presumptuous of me to intrude on your time. It is kind of you to meet my idle fancy, but do not consider yourself under the least obligation. Come next week to what Captain Tench pleases to call my salon, I will give you a cup of tea, and let us say no more about instruction in the stars.
I spoke as matter-of-factly as I could, to give him a graceful way out. All the same, now that I was here again, I hungered to go into the canvas structure, to look through the telescope, to learn what an azimuth was. I hungered for that, as I never hungered to learn another bar of Foote’s Minuet.
But I was ashamed, too. Mr Dawes did not pretend to erudition, the way so many did. He possessed deep and authentic learning. It would be foolish to think I could understand a thousandth of what he knew.
– I mistook, Mr Dawes, I said. I blush at my error.
Could, in fact, feel myself blushing, knew my cheeks were hot and ugly with flame. I put a hand up, that pointless gesture of trying to cool a blushing cheek with a hand equally hot. Now I was the person unable to meet the eye of another.
– Truly, Mrs Macarthur, he said, I would be delighted…
He seemed to remember this was the hollow form of words he had used before.
– Truly, it would give me great pleasure to share.
He coughed into his hand as if the words were an obstruction.
– The stars have been my companions since I was a friendless boy, he said, and smiled that rueful smile. It would give me great pleasure to introduce those companions to another who may enjoy their company.
Now, ridiculously, I felt tears come to my eyes. This awkward stranger had spoken to a part of me that I allowed no one to see. Brassy Mrs Mac
arthur, that lady of the banter that could amuse Tench, charming Mrs Macarthur for whom Worgan would do anything—that brittle carapace of a person had been surprised, in what had seemed nothing more than another part of the social game, by a man speaking from his heart to hers.
BLIND AND DEAF
In his hut, using bits of twig and gumnuts laid out on the table between us, Mr Dawes started on our first lesson. He talked about the sun, and the planets running around it in their orbits, and one planet, our own Earth, having as if its own planet, the moon, running in its own orbit, and waxing and waning depending on the shadow of the Earth across it—and at that point he saw that he had lost me. I stared at the gumnuts and twigs but I did not follow, had not followed from the first.
I knew I was not a stupid woman, but nothing in the learning Mr Kingdon had thought suitable for girls had equipped me for this. Easy arithmetic, enough for household accounts. Dot and carry one, long division. But what Mr Dawes was trying to explain had no numbers to add and subtract, had nothing at all except these gumnuts, these twigs, making ovals as he moved them around the table, and these words that I did not understand.
– You have done no geometry, I think, he said at last, gently, as if not having done geometry was like being blind or deaf.
– No, Mr Dawes, I have not, I said.
I sat miserable with myself. I had truly mistaken this idea of learning.
– You have been good beyond measure, Mr Dawes, I said, trying to snatch back some shreds of dignity. But the stars and planets will have to go on circling without the understanding of an ignorant woman.
He looked at me with some strong feeling that looked close to anger.
– Do not denigrate your abilities, Mrs Macarthur, he said. No one is born knowing geometry. Being a woman, you have been denied the smallest education in such matters, and it is to your great credit that you wish to remedy that lack. Come back again next week and I promise we will make better progress.
A Room Made of Leaves Page 15
