A Room Made of Leaves

by Kate Grenville

  – Mr Dawes and I have lately returned from an expedition into the interior, Mrs M, he said. And I assure you, without a gentleman of his superior skill in navigation, we would still be there! At night by the fire he was able to cast up our courses and work them by a traverse table to pinpoint our exact location: a most remarkable feat, which I will not fail to record in my little account of the colony.

  Remarkable, but his tone and smile said entertaining. I could imagine how he would present poor Mr Dawes in that book of his: as a ridiculous instrument of tedious erudition.

  But I saw my opportunity.

  – Oh, Captain Tench, I cried, with what I hoped was playfulness. I see you will stop at nothing in search of the entertainment your readers hunger for!

  – Indeed, my dear lady, you are correct as always, Tench said with a bow.

  There was a brightness to his eye. I could see him thinking, Ah, she is coming around!

  – But I must tell you, sir, I said, that some of us are shy of being mentioned in your pages. If I suspect that you are tucking away in your memory anything I tell you of my doings, to bring out later for your book, I will become sadly mute in your company!

  I had worked to toss this remark off in the most unconcerned way, but he caught something in my tone.

  – Even mute, madam, you would be a most delightful companion, gallant Tench said.

  I could feel his entire intelligent attention on me.

  – Ah, but I would rather be free to speak, I said. Could you not give me an undertaking to forgo any mention of me in your book?

  – Why, my dear Mrs M, anyone would think you had something to hide, he said. A lover hidden behind a tree, perhaps!

  And made a show of looking around, laughing, it was the best joke imaginable. But was still watching me.

  Do not become earnest, I told myself, or he will catch a whiff of mystery. Too late I realised that in asking for his silence I had put into his hands the very weapon I feared. A great heat of panic rose into my chest.

  The best defence against a teller of stories is dullness, but it was too late for that. Captain Tench would not believe I had become Mary Johnson so quickly.

  I lowered my voice, speaking as if reluctantly.

  – My dear sir, I said, I think you are aware of my position here as a woman. With so few of us, I fear any mention of one will sound like a shout. You know how you men love to—let us say—make mischief with the fairer sex.

  That was a good attempt. Make mischief with the fairer sex. It brought us back to the ground Tench liked, where men and women sized each other up behind a screen of banter. I gave him a small warm smile, at the same time hoping my situation was not about to become more complicated by Mr Macarthur catching sight of us deep in private conversation.

  The charmed suitor returned the smile, but I could see that the inquisitive author still had his nose to the wind.

  – I am in your hands, my dear sir, I said, and spread my own in a gesture of helplessness that by chance brushed against his arm. I can only appeal to you as a gentleman.

  The son of the dancing-master could not resist this.

  – Oh, indeed, you have my word as a gentleman, Mrs M, he said, so fervent I feared he might go down on one knee. Instead he fumbled for my hand, touched my hip as he fumbled, grasped the hand at last, but awkwardly, catching my thumb. I drew my hand away. Here on the bridge we were as exposed as if on a stage. This was a dangerous game. He came close to murmur into my ear.

  – My dearest lady, your helpless admirer will obey, he said. Not a mention, not a single mention of you will appear in my text. Upon my honour.

  Not a single mention of you will appear in my text. I have his book here on the table, with its inscription: To my dear friend John Macarthur, with the greatest admiration and esteem. Captain Tench obeyed the letter of his vow, for I do not appear in the text. But he could not resist finding a loophole whose ingenuity is worthy of the esteemed John Macarthur himself: he includes me in a footnote. It is no more than a passing reference, nothing more than the fact that I was present at a certain dinner at Government House. In fact, a person in a questioning frame of mind might wonder why he bothered to name me at all, but I can imagine how he smiled to himself, composing that footnote.

  There is no mention, anywhere in the book, of Mr Macarthur. My husband does not even rate a footnote. Which might have caused offence but for that fulsome inscription. In any case, if Tench calculated that Mr Macarthur would not bother to read the book, he was right.

  HIS DISGRACEFUL HAT

  Mr Dawes was seldom seen in the settlement, but one morning I saw him walking towards me along the dusty track that went past the barracks. Even from a distance I could see his smile, white in his sun-browned face, and as we came closer to each other I thought that he was going to embrace me then and there.

  Of course he did not. He stopped and took off his disgraceful hat with the sweat-darkened band and the split where it had been creased once too often, and we bowed to each other, sedate as a pair of churchwardens.

  – Good morning, Mrs Macarthur, he said, and the cleverest soul alive could not have guessed that the afternoon before he had been closer to Mrs Macarthur than any man save her husband had ever been. In fact he had been closer than her husband. Mrs Macarthur’s husband could do what he wished with Mrs Macarthur’s legs and arms, but he could not touch her being.

  Only when we were safely past each other did I wonder who might have seen. In this place there was always someone to see, even if it was no one as dangerous as Captain Tench. Nothing had happened, nothing had been said. Nothing was visible. And yet the air rang and swooned. It was hard to believe that others did not feel the world humming when Mr Dawes and I were near each other.

  The thing was madness. It was true that Mr Dawes had few visitors from the settlement. True, too, that he and I were safely hidden in our leafy refuge, and Mrs Brown and Hannaford guarded the path. Still, I knew that Tench visited now and then, and perhaps there were others.

  We were mad to think it was possible. But we did not think, only floated from one meeting to the next. I look back now with amazement and a tingle of remembered fear. Fear, and passion too. I have not forgotten what it was like to lie with him. Sitting here, an old woman, I feel my blood stir at the memory, a blush that tells me I am not dead yet.

  What an unfathomable thing, like a strange warped orrery, all this business is, the puzzle of desire. Each man runs along his own orbit, and each woman runs along hers, each thinking they have set their own course. And yet we are all being cranked by the same invisible handle, impelled by the same forces: the urge to join with another, the yearning to find a fellow soul. All of us moving, but the distance between us never decreasing.

  And for myself, what was the force turning my handle? Desire: what a discovery that was. Ambition, too: I loved meeting again that bold young woman who had thought herself in command of her destiny.

  And, if I may tease you, my unknown reader, let me remind you that you have only my word for any of this. This story, of the tangling of two hearts in Sydney in 1791, is recorded nowhere but in the document you are reading. It may appear to speak with authority, but might it be nothing more than the mischievous invention of a sly old woman?

  SLANDER

  I was wearied of my salon now, and the tightrope it obliged me to balance along, keeping Captain Tench charmed into silence but at arm’s length. As I handed the teacups around, my smile felt as brittle as porcelain.

  He was like a cat, quietly relentless. He knew by now that he would make no headway with me, and I did not think he truly wanted to. It was the game of romance that energised him, or rather the game of power: to create little secrets between us that forced me into complicity.

  On this particular afternoon as I handed him his teacup he took it in such a way that his fingers overlapped mine on the saucer. His fingers were smooth, cool, lingering. I could not drop the cup, could not protest. Anyone watching would have thoug
ht his smile one of thanks for the tea, appreciation of the hospitality, those blameless reasons to smile. But the feel of his skin against mine revealed his satisfaction in having drawn me into a secret touch.

  When he finally took the cup I turned away with the impulse to wipe my fingers on my skirt. He followed my turned head and murmured in his confiding, close-to-the-ear way.

  – Oh, by the way, Mrs Macarthur, he said. I was out at the observatory yesterday, visiting Mr Dawes, your friend and mine. We spoke of you, my dear Mrs M, and your doings together.

  Your doings together! He knew! This time he knew. But I must not show my fluster! Must not slop the tea I was pouring or betray myself by any muscle of my face! There was still time to deny everything. I smiled my social smile, but my legs were trembling, my heart was beating unpleasantly hard. I could feel something in my throat trying to get out, and what was trying to get out was a nausea of fear.

  – He tells me you are making great strides with your astronomical studies, he said. And that your aptitude with botany is truly remarkable.

  I glanced at him but he was turned away, helping himself to sugar, carefully replacing the lid on the sugar-bowl. Was he playing with me, the way the cat likes to keep the mouse alive?

  – Oh, I am a wondrously dull pupil, I said, forcing jocularity into my tone. But can tell you the order of the planets, as they stand in relation to the sun.

  And began to do so, with the thought of creating a weight of plodding fact that would push the conversation away from where it must be going. But I had only got as far as Mars when he interrupted.

  – My word, I see that Dawes is quite right, he said. You have made great strides indeed. But I wonder, has he introduced you to his friends among the natives?

  – Oh yes, I said. I have met them, they are often at his hut.

  The words Is he heavy? rose into my mind and I pressed them down. Dared not speak again, in case they were the words that came out. But he was stirring his sugar, carefully putting the spoon back in the saucer, nodding in the way a man nods who is not listening. I saw that he had a plan for this conversation, and his question was nothing more than the means of moving it in the direction he wanted it to go.

  – I wonder, he said, whether you might have met a native who is a particular friend of Mr Dawes?

  Now he met my eye. He winked.

  – A young girl, a particular and private friend? He calls her Patty, I believe.

  I was not a good enough dissembler to disguise what I felt: outrage, disgust, contempt.

  – Oh, Captain Tench, I cried. I am shocked!

  Shocked, yes, at a man who could create such a grubby lie.

  I opened my mouth to prove him wrong, thinking to bring as evidence the sister that Mr Dawes had told me of. But arguing would only give the lie greater substance, and in any case I would be wasting my breath. Tench had forgotten that he was speculating. A guess had shifted seamlessly into something that, as far as he was concerned, was now plain fact. And the lie had enough appearance of truth to be convincing. That gave it a malign power that the actual truth was not strong enough to defeat.

  How the mind can leap, in less than the time it takes to blink! I had hardly spoken the word shocked when I saw that I could do something better than protest. If Captain Tench thought he already knew what was going on at the observatory, he might not look too hard in that direction. His nasty little invention could serve as a screen or decoy. All my ingenuities could not produce a better way of turning his eyes away from your doings.

  – Oh, our good Mr Dawes, I said. Who would have imagined such a thing?

  I could hear the richness of relief in my voice. Tench heard it too, and I saw him wondering.

  – And indeed I have seen him with the natives, I said, trying to smother the tone of relief with one of reproach. He told me he was learning their language!

  – I am sorry to shock you, Mrs M, Tench said earnestly. And the girl still almost a child.

  He shook his head as if in sorrow, but there was an excitement running under his skin. Salacious, and triumphant too. From the moment he had slyly caressed my fingers, this was where Tench had wanted our exchange to travel: as with the business of Jack Boddice, he wanted to share a dirty secret, and draw me intimately into the dirt of it.

  Never mind. He thought he had trapped me in his secret. He would never know that, to the contrary, he was trapped in mine. The more he told his story of Mr Dawes and Patyegarang, the safer Mr Dawes and Mrs Macarthur would be. Captain Tench could caress my fingers and murmur intimately in my ear all he wished. I would not be afraid of him again.

  He was the last to leave the salon that day. I saw him to the door and when he took my hand and bowed over it, I allowed him to kiss it. He went off whistling. I watched him disappear towards the barracks, a man entirely happy to have a secret, even if it was the wrong one.

  NOTHING NEEDED TO BE EXPLAINED

  The story of Mr Dawes and Mrs Macarthur did not end as it would have in a romance. We were not discovered. No other woman usurped my place. No one died. What happened was at once simpler and more mysterious. It was that one morning, lying in the dawn beside Mr Macarthur, I knew that this was not a proper way to live.

  During my time with Mr Dawes, a new Elizabeth Veale had begun to take shape, a secretive shoot preparing itself deep in the soil, complete with leaves and roots, biding its time until it was ready to push upwards through the heavy earth, into the sunlight of its proper life.

  In the company of Mr Dawes I had found a woman I liked, even admired. Had learned things about myself that I had never guessed at. Our friendship had taught that life was not extinguished in me. Under the bland courtesies of Mrs John Macarthur lived another woman entirely, one I was happy to greet.

  The world had given us this one brief space, a few months as an antipodean summer eased into autumn. It had been a time not of the pleasures of the flesh alone, but a deeper wisdom that might be with me for the rest of my life. I could so easily never have learned things that would stay with me now until I died: that I was complete as I was, with all my flaws and all my strengths. That I took up space in the world, and that I was entitled to that space.

  Having met the woman that I was, I did not wish her to hide like a rat in a drainpipe. I was my truest self with Mr Dawes, but I had to exist in the hard light of the life I had been given. What he and I had made together was honest and important. But his orbit, like mine, lay elsewhere. We had been given a gift from the universe, a momentary precious conjunction. It was not meant to last, only to be valued and its lesson taken to heart.

  I could not imagine what space the world would offer me in the years to come. But the astronomer’s perspective would give me patience. To shrink to the size of a distant star, to slow to the speed of planets that took centuries to perform their serene dance: these were the arts of the astronomer, and I would make them the arts of a woman. I was destined to an orbit I had no power to alter, that of being Mrs John Macarthur. It was my task to find a way for the velocity of that orbit to create a space for my own.

  Mr Dawes hardly needed to be told. Nothing needed to be explained.

  – We have been fortunate, Mrs Macarthur, he said. I count myself lucky beyond deserving.

  We sat for a long quiet time across from each other at his rickety table, watching the fire on its hearth, like a comforting companion who knew better than to try to speak.

  He reached for my hand and led me out of the hut, down towards the water. Neither of us wanted to lie together. That would be too heavy with the last time. We simply sat together in our petit coin, side by side on the rock from which one could see all the way to the east where the sun rose over the headlands and bays, and all the way to the west where it sank behind the body of the continent. Gulls came. We watched as one dived into the water—with such a smack, it must have hurt—missed its prey, wheeled up, smacked down again, staggered into the air. We watched it circle and take aim, smack down once more and this ti
me bob on the water, tossing its head to get the fish down its throat.

  We laughed at the bird, at the sparkle and energy of it all, the way water and sky, fish and bird, wind and tide all worked together in exactly the way they were supposed to. Yes, something was over, but something would always be with us: this life, this world, and what we had given each other.

  MY WHOLE SOCIETY

  It was in the sweet days of early autumn that Mr Dawes and I sat for the last time in notre petit coin. By the beginning of the following summer, the Gorgon was being made ready to return the marines to England. By the time of our second antipodean Christmas my whole society would have departed: Mr Dawes, Captain Tench, Mr Worgan, and all the other marines who had become my friends. The governor remained, but it was an open secret that he would soon be gone, leaving Major Grose in charge until another governor could make his way here.

  There were some new arrivals, and they were pleasant enough men, happy to continue the tradition of tea at Mr Macarthur’s. Colonel Paterson—an agreeable gentleman, second-in-command to Major Grose, and like the governor a protégé of Sir Joseph Banks—had brought an agreeable wife, but after only one or two appearances at my salon the Patersons were sent to the Norfolk Island settlement.

  In any case, there was a bond between those of us who had shared the earliest, hungriest times that no new arrival could match.

  Mr Worgan left me his piano, with exhortations to continue my splendid progress, instructions as to the instrument’s tuning, and the tool to do it with. I have it still, although the piano is gone. Here it is, an odd-shaped bit of metal with no meaning to anyone in the world except me, but I keep it in memory of that friend.

  Captain Tench made no secret of his impatience to be gone.