– Well, Mrs Macarthur, Mr Dawes said. I would say you owe the two of us a song, I believe the lass has that in her mind?
Until I opened my mouth I did not know what I was going to sing. As I was a-walking one morning in May, ’twas down in the meadow among the green hay, my true love he met me the very same day, ’twas down in the meadow among the green hay. There was my mother, singing over her saucepan, stirring a custard that, she explained, you could not leave for as much as a second, and, she said, would not curdle if you sang while you stirred. Of all the music stored away in my brain, why that?
IS HE HEAVY?
On a particular Thursday, Mr Dawes had embarked on another attempt to explain the arcana of retrograde motion, and I felt rescued when Daringa and Milbah and their children came trailing down the track. We greeted them, Mr Dawes brought out a few embers on his shovel, and in short order we were sitting on the ground in front of one of their small tidy fires.
I was now able to say bujari gamarruwa, good day to you, in some version of the women’s language, and understand when they returned the greeting. They were the first words of any other tongue I had learned, apart from the Latin on the Kingdon coat of arms. It gave me more pleasure than I could ever have imagined, to enter the words of another world far enough to exchange a greeting.
Daringa addressed me, a short string of words I did not understand, even when she repeated it. It was clear that she was teasing, gesturing to Mr Dawes and then to me, and whatever she was saying was vastly entertaining to the others. I turned to Mr Dawes, whose look suggested he understood, but for once he was oddly reluctant to translate.
– Come, Mr Dawes, I said. Is my linguistic education to end so soon?
His mouth screwed sideways in that universal signal of doubt, but he was too serious a teacher, and too honest, to go on refusing.
– She is asking, Is he heavy? he said.
– Heavy? Is he heavy? I repeated.
I could feel an intensity of meaning in the air around us that I did not understand, only saw that Mr Dawes and I were the subject of keen scrutiny and much amusement.
And that Mr Dawes was blushing. Actually blushing red to the roots of his hair. It was the blush that told me what was causing such amusement. As quick as a lightning strike I understood that the women thought, or were pretending to think, that Mr Dawes and I came together for more than instruction in astronomy. And now they were watching us, to see if what they thought was true.
Mr Dawes met my eye, the blush still high in his face, and that look, charged with strong and private feeling, told me what I had known all this time, but had not let myself know that I knew. His Holiness the Lieutenant was no monk. On the contrary, he was very much interested in the female of the species, and perhaps especially in one in particular.
That understanding blazed into another: that I was as interested as Daringa in the question of whether Mr Dawes might be heavy.
Now she was calling out something that made the others crow with hilarity, pointing with her chin at Mr Dawes. She used English this time, saying ‘that feller all right’, but there was another part of the sentence that was lost in her laughing.
– Well, Mr Dawes, I said, my voice unsteady from my own laughter, or some other cause, there is something Daringa wants to tell me, but you will have to help me understand!
He hesitated, then his face relaxed into humour.
– It is a reference to a story they have, he said. Based on the Pleiades, the Seven Sisters, they too have a tale about them that involves the chase of a man after women. What Daringa is saying, I fear with regard to me, is, that one all right, but take care with his friend.
– Your friend, I said. Who is your friend, Mr Dawes?
He glanced down at himself. I followed his glance and now, married woman that I was, it was my turn to blush.
MRS MACARTHUR AND MR DAWES
After the women left there was a space of silence between us. I was calm, in an attentive radiance, peace and intensity both. There was no hurry.
– I have a place I would like to show you, Mrs Macarthur, Mr Dawes said, and took my hand. I felt the warm dampness of his palm, and a strong tremor of feeling travelling from his body into mine.
His bed, I assumed, and drew back from the too-direct move from where we were to where we were about to be. He felt the reluctance, took my hand more firmly.
– Down here, if you please, he said, and led me past the hut, down the steep slope towards where the harbour glittered and danced.
– I call it mon petit coin à moi, he said. Do you have French, Mrs Macarthur?
But did not wait for me to say no, I had no French.
– Mon petit coin à moi, he said, and I saw that he was in the business of filling silence. It did not matter whether the silence was filled with English or French or Gadigal.
– It means, my little corner of mine. My very own little corner. Mon petit coin—my little corner. A moi—to me.
And now, scrambling down between the bushes, we came to a halt in a space enclosed on three sides by greenery. The fourth, facing the harbour, was obscured but not closed in by more branches, forming a private space: a room made of leaves.
– Mon petit coin à moi, he said. But now perhaps I may call it notre petit coin à nous. Which means, of course, our little corner of ours.
It was like that first afternoon, when he had not been able to stop talking about the canvas and the azimuth and the grizzling carpenter: Mr Dawes covering the forward movement of a new direction with whatever words he could summon.
He groped under a ledge of rock and brought out a blanket and spread it out on a chair-height, or bed-height, space of smooth rock.
– You see, he said, mon petit coin is equipped with every comfort, since it is a place where I spend many hours.
– Mon petit—how do you say it, Mr Dawes?
Hearing the foreign words in my own mouth, and copying each syllable as he sounded it out, made me feel part of him. As much as the words, we shared the feeling behind them: the pleasure of having a small private place where you could simply be who you were. A moi. Mine alone, my own.
It was no clap of thunder, but as quiet and unforced as ice melting on a stream, unseen until at last the surface cracks and is borne away, showing what was there all the time: the relentless pouring of desire.
Our relationship was always one of the greatest simplicity. Between us there was fondness and pleasure. He was a warm and eager companion. I heard him laughing, a pulse of breath against my ear. I was always Mrs Macarthur, no matter what might be going on, and he was always Mr Dawes. We took a great deal of pleasure in the formality of our address, as well as all that we did with each other.
I felt my skin go out to meet him, felt my blood warmed by his nearness. The habit of being Mrs Macarthur—proper, courteous, reserved—had grown around me like a long-worn garment, every stitch familiar. Yet here it was, unravelling to show me what lay beneath. With Mr Dawes, that surprising man, I found myself becoming the possessor of a body that could crave the body of another and cry out from sheer delight.
On the blanket there was no room for two people to lie other than close together, feeling one another’s heat, hearing one another’s hearts. A person barely had to breathe for the words to be heard.
– You said, I blush at my error, he whispered. And when I looked I saw that you were indeed blushing. Cool Mrs Macarthur was blushing.
He touched the cheek that had blushed.
– A blush becomes you, Mrs Macarthur.
A GIFT
It was a puzzle that Mr Dawes, as guarded in his own way as I was in mine, should recognise me. I think now that he recognised the shield. He knew what a shield looked like and what it was for, because he lived behind one too.
He was not handsome, but I came to find him so. He was from Portsmouth, his father a clerk with the Office of Ordnance, and had been a scholarship boy bullied for his humble circumstances. His consolation had been the st
ars and planets, the gloriously indifferent grandeur of their movements the only comfort to his loneliness. Had become a lieutenant of marines because every ship needed a man who could calculate by the stars exactly where the vessel was on the blankness of the ocean. Had learned how to hide who he was, a strange creature his fellow officers thought him, with strange enthusiasms. Was thankful, he said, that his stargazing duties gave him a reason to be away from the settlement.
Portsmouth was a fair step from Bridgerule, but not the other end of the country. It gave me a painful pleasure to dream a little, of how things might have been if it had been Mr Dawes and myself behind the hedge.
Within the bounds of forgivable human stupidity, we came to know each other. For a short stretch of summer months, peppered always with the pungency of danger, we made each other happy. How simple, to write the word, and to remember the feeling. To enquire too deeply into that happiness is unnecessary, another kind of stupidity. All I can say is that the happiness we had was a gift, and I am grateful.
From our room of leaves we heard waves slapping at the shore, watched gulls wheeling and floating on the breeze. From that spot, if you looked to east or west, the water of the harbour seemed to end, closed off by enfolding points of tree-furred land, as if that mighty body of water were nothing more than a lake, a space that belonged only to us. Now and then we saw people of the Gadigal and Cameraygal in the slips of bark from which they fished. Now and then the packet boat laboured past on its way to or from Parramatta, the sail flapping or the oars dripping and knocking hollowly against the wood. Once the reverend drifted by in a dinghy, a fishing line over the stern. But behind our screen of branches it was possible to forget that there was a world beyond, where Mrs Macarthur and Mr Dawes were tangled in nets of impossibility.
As the afternoon drew towards evening we watched the glow of the late sunlight on the water, that soft glinting and twinkling, the light hanging among the leaves of the bushes, and the stillness watching us. When the evening star—Venus, to astronomers like ourselves—began to separate itself from the sky, it was time for me to go. Then I had to promise myself that I would be back. In the meantime Venus would be there, every evening, to remind me of that other world.
We never spoke of Mr Macarthur. Never spoke of the future. We knew there could be none.
TRUST
Shortly after Mr Dawes and I discovered each other, I embarked on an awkward conversation with Mrs Brown. She was a shrewd woman, and our Thursday routine—Mrs Macarthur disappearing down the track alone—was peculiar. From week to week it was more urgent to find a way to say Do not tell Mr Macarthur.
Hannaford was ahead of us on our way up the ridge, Edward on his shoulders—we could hear him piping out a parody of the shouts of the sergeant-at-arms, and Hannaford playing up to him, quick-marching, to the right about-facing, pausing to present imaginary arms.
– Mrs Brown, I said, I must tell you, Mr Dawes is an unusual soul. A solitary, you understand. Not much for company.
Seeing in my mind’s eye Mr Dawes with his Gadigal and Wangal friends, playing the fool as he added to his vocabulary: now pretending to eat, now to everyone’s entertainment creeping on all fours or scratching his armpit.
– Yes, Mrs Macarthur, Mrs Brown said.
– Which is why he prefers…
I groped for words. To be alone with me was much too blunt.
– Prefers that we are not distracted. I am a poor pupil, Mrs Brown, and distracted all too easily!
– I understand, Mrs Macarthur.
I wondered if that was amusement I could hear in her voice, but her face was hidden behind her bonnet.
– It is not what is usually done, I said. A married woman…
Ahead of us Hannaford had turned, Edward still up on his shoulders, and was waiting for us. Briskly, as if impatient with me, Mrs Brown made my complication simple.
– I understand, she said again. As far as Hannaford and myself go, I can assure you, Mrs Macarthur, lessons are between a pupil and a teacher and no one’s business but theirs.
She turned and looked me fair in the eyes. For the space of several heartbeats we were not servant and mistress but two women who understood each other.
– You can trust us, Mrs Macarthur, she said. Hannaford and me. To understand what you are saying.
Us. Hannaford and me. I had been too full of my own affairs to take note of what I saw every Thursday when I walked back up the track: Mrs Brown and Hannaford sitting beside each other on the backside-shaped rock, quietly talking, Edward playing at their feet, the model of a sweet family scene. These were two people whose hard lives had not erased the same urge Mr Dawes and I had, to find a companion. I could trust them. They would not want to forgo their afternoons on the rock.
PAPILIO
I could hardly believe that Mr Macarthur did not see what was happening. Could he not tell how bliss-softened I was when I returned from my lessons? But he understood only the animal aspect of relations between the sexes, and so could not recognise that tenderness in another.
In Mr Macarthur’s eyes, as in Tench’s, Mr Dawes was a clever buffoon, an awkward machine of mathematics. The stars, and a place to view them from, were all he appeared to need. To have so few wants was contemptible. He had no ambition, did not delight in scheming, took no pleasure in besting a rival. In the eyes of Mr Macarthur, those lacks made Mr Dawes hardly a man at all.
In the beginning the orrery had been a good pretext, essential for the lessons but too difficult to transport. When botany was added to astronomy, Mr Dawes’ headland was the best place to examine the delicate plants that had been trampled out of existence closer to the settlement. The pretexts were accepted, and Mr Macarthur made no difficulty about me visiting the observatory every week. I let him assume that Hannaford and Mrs Brown were with me there, and he did not show enough interest for any outright lies to be necessary.
Still, on the rare occasions when my husband enquired after the weekly lessons, I wondered if there was a recognition that he was not aware of behind the questions. I made sure I shared only the driest husk of the riches I was being given.
– Such an interesting fact, Mr Macarthur, I would begin, I wonder if you know that those plants which produce a pod like a bean are of the family called Papilionaceae, so called because the flower resembles a butterfly or papilio?
Mr Macarthur never found it necessary to be instructed beyond a single sentence. He always found a reason to leave the room, or become engrossed in a book, and that was the end of botany or astronomy for another week.
WRITING HIS NAME
I sailed close to the wind in one of my letters to Bridie, written at the time when Mr Dawes and myself were in the full blaze of our friendship. I have the letter in my hand now. At the time I wrote the words, I thought I was simply telling Bridie about the various people who were our society. But now I remember the dangerous pleasure I took in manoeuvring my news to include a particular name again and again. Mr Dawes and Captain Tench and a few others are the chief among whom we visit. Innocent enough, and so is the next: Under Mr Dawes I have made a small progress in Botany. But here I can remember smiling to myself: Mr Dawes is so much engaged with the stars that to mortal eyes he is not always visible. At last I could not resist a private joke: I had the presumption to become Mr Dawes’ pupil, but I soon found I had mistaken my abilities and blush at my error.
I blush at my error! Reading the faded old ink I am smiling, remembering my pleasure in telling my secret but—as I thought—disguising it. I considered myself very clever. Now I see that this letter shouts the truth from the rooftops.
A DANGEROUS ACQUAINTANCE
I trusted Mrs Brown and Hannaford. But I feared there could be no secrets in a community of a thousand souls packed into one small clearing in the forest. Most particularly when one of them was writing a book. An author was a dangerous acquaintance. When Tench and I encountered each other down by the bridge one afternoon and he stopped to speak to me, I smiled
my blandest smile. Go carefully, I told myself.
– Well, Mrs M, how are your studies in astronomy progressing, he said. The labour it took me to arrange your lessons—I hope it has proved worthwhile?
Innocently, it seemed, but Tench was never innocent. Does he know?
He moved closer.
– I was at pains to persuade His Holiness, he murmured, as if telling me a secret. No easy matter, I assure you, but for your sake, my dearest lady, no task is too onerous.
His tone was solemn and went along with a yearning look. No, he did not know. He had stopped me at the bridge to quiz me about my lessons in astronomy, not with any suspicion, but to give himself the chance to act the lovesick swain. I thought of making some satiric remark—would he now kindly slay a dragon for me?—but changed my mind. Any response, no matter how mocking, would arrive at his ear as the next move in the dance of flirtation.
After the shock of Jack Boddice I had been a little cool with Captain Tench. But he was not a man to believe a woman could resist him, and I knew by the arch looks he gave me that he judged my coolness to be simply part of the game of advance and retreat. There had been no more tests. Tench had been all gallantry, all courtliness, all courtesy. But waiting for the next move in the game.
I would have liked to pay no more attention to him for the rest of the marines’ time in New South Wales, but I could not be too chilly, because I had come to see that I needed something from him: his silence. Perhaps he guessed nothing, but I could all too easily imagine him, in his book, describing Mrs Macarthur’s weekly visits to the observatory in such a way as to awake a certain reader’s suspicious attention. That might not happen until far into the future, but whenever it took place, the consequences for me would be dire. Captain Tench did not know it, but he had in his hand a tool that could bring down disaster on me. In some way or other I had to ensure that there would be no mention of me in his book.
A Room Made of Leaves Page 17
