The Secret Fate of Mary Watson (30 page)

2ND SEPTEMBER 1881

The wind’s from the southwest this morning, blowing hard and choppy like a series of slaps. It whines and whistles under and around the door. Puffs through the narrow gaps in the shutters.

‘I go for water now, missy.’

Fear flutters softly at the base of Ah Sam’s throat. I know what he’s thinking. If we have water, we can barricade ourselves in the house.

He bustled over this morning, his usual cheerful self, but then I showed him the chickens and sent him to check on the dogs. He came back with the news that Rufus was dead, speared through the stomach. Bob’s other cur, Sylvester, was whining and pacing miserably around the corpse.

‘Untie him,’ I told Ah Sam. ‘Give the poor animal a chance to run and hide.’

Now, it’s clear by the look on his face that he doesn’t want to brave the heavily treed swamp to reach the clear spring beyond it.

‘They realise the men have gone,’ I say. ‘They’re just trying to frighten us into leaving.’

My words are empty. The blacks must know we have no seaworthy vessel to flee in. But what else can I tell him? That they are toying with us? That they will attack, in numbers, at a time and place of their own choosing?

I’m deliberately brisk, rushing around the house, rag in hand. Any cleanable surface gets polished to within an inch of its life. My eye catches the calendar hanging crooked on the nail. Only one day of solitude crossed off with a thick pencil. Twenty-nine to go until we’re off the island.

I’ve brought the two shells that Porter gave me into the house. Placed them on the knick-knack shelf so that I can see them, with a twist of my head, from anywhere in the communal room. I walk over, run my fingers lightly over each, then look to where Ferrier sits on the floor, propped up by a blanket, a pillow on either side. His arms carve circles through the dusty sunlight seeping through thin cracks in the shutters. He chuckles in approval as the shadows swirl and loop. He doesn’t realise he’s responsible for the morning’s entertainment. Doesn’t know his own movements have conjured this image of a maypole, ribbons, young girls just out of sight, dancing.

‘I won’t let anything happen to my baby.’

I’m looking at Ferrier when I speak but talking to Ah Sam. When he doesn’t answer, I turn to face him.

‘Do you hear me? I’ll shoot every native between here and Brisbane first.’

Two weeks on and now only fourteen days until the drop. The blacks have left us alone for over a fortnight. But that doesn’t mean they’re not bolder with every moment that passes. Ah Sam saw two canoes dragged up on the beach sixty yards to the south. No effort had been made to hide them. Fires are visible daily to the east, grey smoke spiralling up from behind Cook’s Look.

Nights are the worst. For hours, I listen as they chant their songs near the house: nasal, repetitive. A concert just for me. The voices are insidious: words and melody together like an army crawling on its belly down my ear canals. Each night they make a bit more ground, getting closer to their target of my mind.

Coming on purple dusk. Standing at the ragged border where rough ground meets sand, I spot the steamer. Heading north. It’s too far away to make out a name on the hull, and the looking glass is back in the house. I put a hand up to visor my eyes, squint out towards it. An unexpected wave of loneliness breaks over me.

I wonder what they’re doing, the people on board. Playing games on deck; or chatting in the smoking room below. They would dress for dinner soon, of course. The women with buttoned-up, long silk gloves and soft, kid boots. The men in silk-lined twill suits, looking over the top of gilt snuffboxes. Gazing at the women. Imagining how it might be to open their mouths on those soft female throats, taste the perfume there. Nothing like what I remember of the journey from Cornwall: third-class steerage, smelly oil lamps, ticking stuffed with straw on a wooden stretcher for a bed. Fleas.

What is it that’s caught me out like this? Is it only their money I’m envious of? The civilised life of the beautiful people? Or merely the ordered universe of wealth? Everything available at the drop of a hat. No centipedes under the table’s oilcloth. No weevils in the flour. No amount of corruption festering at the core of things, that can’t be bought off …

‘What is it you want, Mary?’

I say it out loud. The same question Porter asked me. Back then, I could only pick at one ragged end of my dissatisfaction: the fact that I was worried about Carrie on the Lizard and wanted her safely away. I was hiding from the true and larger answer. But I’ve disciplined myself so well, and for so long, I wonder if I can even think beyond singular, immediate needs now.

‘I want my baby to grow up happy and healthy.’

It’s a given. Beyond that, my emotions seize on my restraint. I can hear Porter’s voice in my head, nurturing, patient.
But what about you, Mary?

It doesn’t matter. Not here and now. Even if I had some epiphany, the smallness or hugeness of my desires are irrelevant when there’s no one to hear. When the wind just takes my words like any other piece of detritus and carries them out to sea. I could talk to myself for days with no consequence but madness.

I feel an unamused smile lift the corners of my mouth. Now it’s Mama’s words whispering, telling me that all of my problems are of my own ambitious making.
You’re more like your father than you think
.
Picking up an axe to split a toothpick.

Ferrier’s in his nightdress on a rug under a nearby tree. He’s talking in a series of gurgles and grunts, addressing his commentary to the leaves of the pisonia as they rustle and flap above him. He seems
so self-contained, amusing himself for hours on end. He knows nothing of the danger we’re in. He doesn’t understand that, if I fail, he will die. But I do. And I can’t think of anything but what’s at stake.

Ah Leung’s further down the beach, casting a fishing line out beyond the crystalline break of the waves. Ah Sam’s checking on the few remaining chickens. There’ll be no eggs. Laying requires a settled life, not constant stress.

Over towards the swamp, a goanna heads leisurely for a tree. Its huge claws find purchase on the trunk. The long tongue flicks like a knife strap. They’ve grown insolent, the lizards, since the men have left. The last time I encountered one, instead of lumbering away, it turned and stared at me. Steadily, calculatingly, with cold, black eyes. I wonder if they’re in league with the natives. And if they think they’re winning.

25TH SEPTEMBER 1881

The last four nights, I’ve invited Ah Sam and his sleeping mat into the house. Neither of us thinks to suggest Ah Leung might be given the same treatment. Let his precious joss protect him.

Should anyone lift the roof at night and look down, we would appear like a couple. An odd one, but a couple nevertheless, caring for our child. They’d see Ah Sam change the baby’s napkin, soak the soiled one in the bucket filled with water and a capful of Carbolacene. While I rinse the dishes in a shallow pan. Afterwards, they’d see me settle into the rocker with my knitting. Ah Sam sits cross-legged on the floor, the curved wooden box he uses as a pillow in front of him. He lifts the lid, takes out a few long sandalwood sticks. We argue briefly about whether or not he should burn them to keep evil away. My continued objection is that the smell makes the baby sneeze. But I give in, and he lights them by poking the tips through the top of the lantern. The prickly yellow smell creeps through the small room until we both
grow sleepy, listening to the wheeze and stretch of the ocean on its rack. The night breeze licking at gaps in the roof.

Around nine o’clock, I ask him if he really believes there are bad spirits on the island.

‘This very old place.’

I watch the thin, dirty smoke from the sticks curl as it rises to the ceiling. Wrap the wool around one finger and push the needle through the loop to begin a sleeve on Ferrier’s new jumper. The men didn’t think to fasten the loose sheet of tin on the smokehouse roof before they left. It gives a metallic twang as it lifts in the wind; a low creak as it falls back.

Ah Sam’s face is oddly lit in the incense-soaked glow. I imagine an ivory statue left in the weather to gather moss. Once again I wonder at his age.

‘Where are you from, Ah Sam? Which province in China?’

Sylvester barks outside. I can’t tell from which direction. The ocean and breeze are up to their usual acoustic tricks.

‘Kwangtung, missy,’ he says.

‘Do you have a wife … children?’

The baby snuffles. My foot goes out automatically to rock the cradle.

He nods but volunteers no details. Looks up at me. Straight through me, it seems. His eyes are bright. ‘You go up again?’ He points to where I know Cook’s Look swells behind the house.

‘One more time, Ah Sam.’

‘Why?’

‘Work for the Empire. That’s all I can tell you.’

My eyes stray to the shelf that holds the lantern with its polygon reflector. I retrieved it from Percy’s hut some time ago, after the incident with the dead chickens.

He leans back stubbornly on his haunches. ‘I come with you.’ His shaved forehead shines in the weak lantern light.

There’s a sudden popping sound from outside. Did someone kick a steel bucket? No. Just an empty kerosene tin contracting in the cool night air.

‘No. I need you to look after Ferrier.’ It’s time to tell him. ‘When the next trip up the hill is over, Ah Sam, I’m leaving the island with the baby. Do you want to come with us? I don’t want to leave you here.’

He nods, unsurprised. ‘I go back to China soon. How you leave?’

I pause. Stop rocking. Gaze at him evenly. ‘Ah Sam, you must promise me that you will never tell anyone about what has happened here. I need to know you won’t betray me. It’s terribly important that you say nothing. Important to us all.’

He gets up and walks over to the door to look through the peephole. Apparently seeing nothing untoward, he turns back, some private joke toying around the edges of his mouth.

‘I very good at keeping quiet. How you leave?’

‘Percy’s coming back to fetch us.’

I don’t know what I’ve said, but every muscle stiffens in his body.

‘I not the one to betray you, missy.’

‘Do you mean Ah Leung? It’s all right. I know about him.’

He moves his mouth with his lips closed, as though tasting his next words before he spits them out. ‘You don’t know Mister Fuller.’

‘Percy? What about him?’

A sudden prescience tightens in a band around my head.

‘Mister Fuller, he work with Mister Boule. Both work for French government.’

I sink back in the chair. My shoulders drop. The knitting falls from my hands to my lap. Ferrier stares up at me from the cradle, his eyes big and wide, as if he too is listening.

‘How could you know such a thing?’ I ask.

Ah Sam takes up position again, cross-legged on the floor next to his wooden box. ‘I work ASN Company’s wharf in Cooktown. Sometimes, cargo come night-time. I unload, and hear things. From Mister Boule, Mister Fuller, French captain. I know they all work together.’ He looks at me unsmiling, an old resentment in his eyes. ‘White men not mind Chinese. Think we have no ears. Mister Fuller not remember me. Chinese all the same to him.’

A French spy. I start to shake. And if Ah Leung works for Percy, then he, too, works for the French.

‘Do you think Ah Leung killed those prostitutes in Cooktown for some political reason?’

A quick nod. ‘Maybe.’

And if Charley knew all along …‘Perhaps Charley ordered it done?’

‘Maybe those girls hear something they shouldn’t,’ he says.

The girls at Charley’s are privy to all sorts of gossip from drunk and lusty clients. Easy to see now how a few of them — an unlucky few, whose only crime was talkativeness — had overheard something that sealed their death warrants.

‘You need to watch out for Ah Leung, missy.’

It’s all sinking in. Small discrepancies, signs I could have read differently. Charley getting me to deliver those notes. Was he using me to deliver misinformation to Roberts? Something he said in his office the last time I was there, when I mentioned he should go back to France:
A true Frenchman, he carries his country with him.
His total lack of concern about who had murdered
his girls. And Percy’s secrecies. That carefully coached English accent. His latest trip to Melbourne. The earlier disappearances that annoyed Bob so when I first came to Cooktown. The visit to the French man-o’-war immediately after the schooner had delivered the note from Roberts. Did he seduce me as an expedient way to keep me docile and incurious?

The most incredible thing is that all of this has been going on under Captain Roberts’s nose. The man I thought invincible. The man I thought saw everything. And what about me — supposedly so good at reading people?

No time to wallow in my own humiliation now. I have to concentrate … Ah Sam is right. Ah Leung is more dangerous than ever.

Then I see a small flaw in the narrative.

‘You’re mistaken, Ah Sam. You must be. Otherwise the last signalling wouldn’t have gone smoothly. The French would have intervened to prevent the drop.’

But he’s not moved to doubt. ‘I tell you the truth.’

Am I grasping at straws? Perhaps. I know nothing about what really happened. I received and relayed a message I didn’t even understand. In five days I’ll do it again. This time, the message could be an order for my own execution and I’d never know. My clever plans all rest on the lies Percy and Charley used to groom me for their own purposes.

One of the sandalwood sticks has gone out. Ah Sam lifts it from the jar and relights it at the lantern. His fingernails extend beyond his fingertips, tapering slightly. But they’re not claws like Ah Leung’s. I watch him coldly. Can I even trust him? Who is he really working for? Who knows? Who knows with any of them? Maybe Ah Sam’s just another murderous leopard, the island a
pack of them. And I’ve let him into the house. Let him care for the baby. Maybe it’s Ah Leung who has been most honest. He’s never once attempted to camouflage his spots.

Ah Sam seems to feel the dark, impossible swirl of my thoughts. He looks me square in the eye.

‘You have to trust someone, missy.’

Ah, but Captain Roberts told me to trust no one.

The baby whimpers. Automatically, I pull back the mosquito net. Lift him out of the cradle to put him to my breast. I’ve done this so many times in Ah Sam’s presence, I never think to feel uncomfortable. Try as I might, I can’t feel uncomfortable now. My mind won’t rest, but my body responds to Ferrier’s mouth. I feel the tug of his lips, then the tingle of my milk letting down. Just at the crucial moment he pulls away to look at my face. A squirt of milk hits him square in the eye. ‘Silly!’ I guide his mouth back to my nipple. He bucks then settles, kneads my breast with his tiny fist. I can smell the faint-vanilla scent of the milk flowing into him, making him strong. He’s the light that I’ll follow in the storm. The only light.

I gaze down at his perfectly formed face. Already his eyes are closing again. ‘Little lighthouse.’

Ah Sam reaches into the wooden box for his opium pipe. The sickly sweetness soon fills the room. My nipple pops gently from Ferrier’s mouth. He’s too sleepy for the other side. I feel an uncomfortable tightness in the breast he hasn’t suckled. Lift him back into the cradle, do up my blouse, then pick up my knitting.

The pragmatic side of me has the last few words: I have no choice. I have to proceed as though Ah Sam is on my side. I can’t do this thing alone. But what now? If I don’t go through with the signalling, Percy will know that something’s wrong. If I do, he’ll
still be here just hours later to collect us. Or, more probably, to make sure Ah Leung has killed us. Unless, of course, by that time the blacks have saved him the trouble. Or maybe he won’t come back at all, take my money and run, leave us to our fate.

‘Oh, God. What do I do?’

When God doesn’t answer, I turn to Ah Sam. But already his eyelids are drooping. The opium’s kicking in. My own lips feel tingly from the borrowed air around the pipe. He takes another long drag.

‘We can’t win, Ah Sam. There’s no way out.’

He just stares at me for a long moment. He’s half-asleep, sitting up. The pipe falls from between his fingers to smoulder on the floor. His body lists slightly to the left. The faintest oriental snore.