The Tenderness of Wolves (18 page)

As if this business wasn’t complicated enough, an hour ago there came an extraordinary rumour from Dove River that Mrs Ross had vanished, and gossip is rife that she has been kidnapped by the fugitive. Knox is horrified by this turn of events, and puzzles over his part in it. Did he
somehow cause this by allowing her to speak to the man? Or are the two disappearances purely coincidental? This, he has to concede, is unlikely. On balance he has to hope that she has been kidnapped, for if she is on her own, her chances of survival in this weather are bleak.

When he broke the news to his wife and daughters, he was careful to stress his certainty that the prisoner would be putting as much distance between himself and Caulfield as possible. They reacted to the news of Mrs Ross’s disappearance with predictable horror. It is the nightmare of every white woman in a savage country, although he reminds them that it is as yet only rumour. But in everyone’s minds, his escape, and the disappearance of a local woman, has sealed Parker’s guilt.

Mackinley took the news with a sort of grim-faced satisfaction, even as he swore at Adam’s stupidity and railed at Caulfield’s lack of proper facilities. He is now out with one of the search parties, scouting for possible tracks along the bay. After the encounter with Mackinley, when he told him about the empty warehouse, Knox had to shut himself in his study for a glass of brandy, where he succumbed to a fit of violent trembling. Fortunately it passed after a few moments, but he still cannot quite screw up the courage to go out and face the world.

‘Daddy?’ Maria has not called him that for as long as he can remember. ‘Are you all right?’ She comes up behind him and puts her hands on his shoulders. ‘This is terrible.’

‘It could be worse. It could always be worse.’

Maria looks as if she has been crying–another childhood habit he assumed she had abandoned. He knows she is worried not for herself, but for his reputation.

‘I can’t bear what people will say.’

‘Don’t jump to conclusions. We have all assumed that we know what happened, but it’s all guess. If you want to know what I think …’ He checks himself. ‘Most escaped prisoners
don’t get very far. He’ll probably be behind bars again in the next day or two.’

‘I can’t bear to think about that poor woman.’

‘No one has spoken to her husband yet. I will go and talk to him. There may be nothing in it at all.’

‘Mackinley looked so angry I thought he was going to hit Adam.’

‘He’s disappointed. He thinks a conviction will earn him promotion.’

Maria makes a scornful noise in her throat. ‘I can’t believe we can ever go back to normal after this.’

‘Oh … in a few months time we will barely remember any of it.’

He glances out of the window and wonders if she finds this convincing. He has, once again, the vertiginous sensation of impending disaster. When he looks round (a few seconds later? a minute? He isn’t sure) Maria has gone. He had been mesmerised by the whiteness outside. The flakes settle like feathers and trap a layer of air on the ground, each snowflake touching the next only by the tips of its axes.

The perfect snow for covering tracks.

Susannah responds to the stresses of the day by trying on frocks in her room, flinging aside those that have become too demodé. This ritual takes place every few months, whenever Susannah feels the yoke of country life press too irksomely on her shoulders. Maria stands in the doorway watching her tug at the ribbons on a green moiré dress with determined scorn. She feels a flood of affection for her sister, for worrying about things like waistlines and sleeve widths at a time of crisis.

‘That dress would trim up perfectly well, Susannah. Don’t tear it.’

Susannah looks up. ‘Well I certainly can’t wear it with
these stupid things, they look quite ridiculous.’ She sighs and throws the dress down, defeated. The offending ribbons were sewn on by Maria herself, with tiny, firm stitches.

Maria picks it up. ‘We could put on new sleeves, lace perhaps, take these off, and change the shape of the neckline, so, and then it would be quite fashionable.’

‘I suppose. And what could we do with this one?’ She holds up a sprigged cotton calico that has more than a hint of Marie Antoinette playing at milkmaids.

‘Um … dishrags.’

Susannah laughs–her private, at-home laugh, which is a substantial guffaw, as opposed to her simpering public laugh, which her mother tells her is more ladylike. ‘It is awful, isn’t it? I don’t know what I was thinking of.’

‘Matthew Fox, as far as I can remember.’

Susannah flings the dress at her. ‘All the more reason for it to become a dishrag.’

Maria sits on the bed, surrounded by the despised cast-offs. ‘Have you written to Donald Moody yet?’

Susannah avoids her eye. ‘How can I? There’s no way of delivering anything.’

‘I thought you promised?’

‘Well, so did he, but I haven’t received anything–and he knows where I am.’

‘Well there’s bound to be some news soon. I should imagine they’ll hear about the prisoner somehow, and realise they’re on a wild goose chase.’ She lies down among the empty dresses. ‘I thought you liked him.’

‘He’s all right.’ A blush rises in Susannah’s cheeks, to her annoyance. Maria grins at her.

‘Stop it! But what am I supposed to do?’

‘Oh, I thought you might have written some long passionate letters and tied them with a pink ribbon, kept next to your heart.’

Maria is pleased at Susannah’s blush. She has seen plenty
of young men conceive a passionate fondness for her sister and feel they have awoken some answering spark, only for Susannah to lose interest after a week or so, her eye fixing on something more appealing just around the corner. The drawers of her dressing table are stuffed with tokens of unrequited love. Maria’s own dressing table is not so burdened, but this does not make her jealous of her sister; far from it. She sees how Susannah finds all the attention a great irritant, one which puts more pressure on her to behave like a young lady. All the men who find her face and figure so charming fail to realise a fundamental truth about Susannah–that she is a profoundly pragmatic girl who is fonder of swimming and fishing than elegant tea parties. She is bored by abstract talk and embarrassed by flowery professions of emotion. Because Maria knows this, she is not envious of the attention Susannah receives. And because Maria knew, when she became very fond of a young man who taught at the school last year, how sincerely Susannah hoped he would make her happy. It wasn’t Susannah’s fault that when Robert met her, he became confused about his feelings, and ended up stammering a confession of love to her, then slinking back to Sarnia on the next steamer, cowed by her horrified reaction. Susannah had not told Maria, but the rumour got around anyway, as everything does in Caulfield, sooner or later. Maria, after a period of silent agony, made a wax model of Robert Fisher and roasted it slowly over her bedroom fire. Strangely enough, it made her feel better.

Maria has more or less taken a vow of chastity since then, as she can’t imagine meeting a man who would measure up to her ideal of manhood–her father. In any case, she isn’t sure that marriage and domestic bliss is all it’s cracked up to be. In Caulfield and Dove River, women work their fingers to the bone and age with frightening speed, so that by the time the men are in what you might call their prime, still hale albeit a touch rugged, they appear to be married to
their mothers. It is not a fate she likes to imagine for herself.

But Donald seems a decent and intelligent man. It has long been her habit, on meeting someone for the first time, to be provocative and prickly, in order to turn aside those who are too shallow to see through her façade. It is, she is well aware, a form of self-defence, reinforced after her unfortunate affair. Donald persevered, even if it was because of Susannah, and she respects him for it. And then, when they met in the street after he had met Sturrock, she had been impressed by what he said, even to the point of wondering whether everything she had been told about the Searcher were true.

‘What about this one?’ Susannah holds up a pale-blue woollen frock; a previous favourite. ‘I’d like to wear this again, if we could do something about the sleeves.’

She seems to have put all thoughts of Donald out of her mind. In a sense, as soon as he walked away from Caulfield, he ceased to exist in any meaningful way, and became an abstract, a thing in abeyance, to be returned to when he comes back, not before. Maria reflects that Susannah will probably never write to him first, if at all. She wonders, were it not for Donald’s infatuation with Susannah, which was obvious from their first meeting, whether she would have allowed herself to care for him. Foolish even to think about it, of course.

Knox takes the trap and drives himself to Dove River to visit Angus Ross. He has failed to locate the source of the rumour, and chastises himself for believing it so readily. Since it broke he has heard increasingly wild stories: that the Maclarens have been butchered in their beds; that a child has gone missing; even that the prisoner tied Knox himself up while he made his escape. So he has a reasonable hope of finding Mrs Ross at home.

He finds Ross mending fences in the fields beyond the
house. Ross keeps working as Knox approaches, only straightening up and acknowledging him when he is a few paces away. The man is known for his taciturnity, as his wife is known for her disregard for convention, but he greets him cordially enough.

‘Angus.’

‘Andrew, I hope you’re well.’

‘Well enough.’ He is one of the few people in Dove River who have no apparent difficulty in using Knox’s Christian name. ‘I know why you’re here.’

Ross has pale eyes and hair and a stolid demeanour. He reminds Knox of weathered granite: a typical Pict. He and his wife share the same stubbornness, although she is rather elegant and English-looking, if flinty. Granite and flint. The sort of people it is impossible to imagine in intimate circumstances (Knox turns his mind from this with a mental shudder and guilty self-admonition.) And they are both so different from Francis that no one could ever mistake him for their natural child.

‘Yes. We’ve heard some wild rumours today. Everyone is in turmoil with the prisoner getting out. It is most unfortunate.’

‘Well, it’s true. She has gone, but she hasn’t gone against her will.’

Knox waits for a moment for more information. But Ross is not that forthcoming.

‘Do you know where?’

‘To look for Francis. She said she would. She couldn’t bear the worry.’

Knox is astonished at the man’s coolness, even if he’d expected as much.

‘I expect she’ll run into the Company men.’

‘She’s alone?’

Ross shrugs minutely, watching his eyes. ‘If you’re asking me whether the prisoner went with her, I can’t say. I
can’t imagine why he would want to help her, can you?’

‘Aren’t you worried, man? Your wife, out there … at this time of year?’

Ross picks up his axe and mattock and heads towards the house. ‘Come and have a tea.’

Knox realises he has no choice.

What Ross shows Knox in his kitchen suggests that he need not worry unduly over the immediate welfare of Mrs Ross. She is, apparently, well equipped. He even reads the note she left, which is terse but expressive. The phrase ‘Pay no mind to what you will hear’ might allude to the prisoner’s escape, but it might not. Ross makes no comment on this. Knox wonders if Ross feels any jealousy, any concern of a husband whose wife might have run off with another man, however peculiar the circumstances. He can detect no sign of them.

As he sips the tea–unexpectedly subtle–he finds himself speculating on the state of the Rosses’ marriage. Maybe they can’t stand each other after all these years. Maybe he’s glad she’s gone. And the son.

‘Perhaps it would be best, at the moment, if you said nothing of this to anyone else. I will say that I have spoken to you and that there is no immediate cause for concern. We don’t want any more … hysteria.’

He envisages more and more men setting off on the journey north, and feels a bubble of wild laughter rising in his throat at the thought. An inappropriate reaction that is becoming more and more prevalent in him with increasing age. Perhaps it is the onrush of senility. He swallows it down–this is a serious business. But perhaps more men will not be necessary, since Donald Moody and Jacob are already, hopefully, on the spot–wherever that spot is.

Ross nods. ‘If you say so.’

‘Am I … right in thinking that you don’t intend to go after her yourself?’

A tiny pause. With most men, his question would be construed as a slight.

‘Where would I go? In this weather I can’t know for sure where she has gone. As I said, she will most likely run into the Company men.’

Is he now trying to justify himself? Knox feels a stab of antipathy. He is beginning to find this stoicism unnerving, not to say repellent.

‘Well …’ Knox stands up, giving in to the urge to leave. ‘Thank you for being so frank with me. I sincerely hope your family will both be restored to you very shortly.’

Ross nods and thanks him for coming, seemingly untroubled by either concern or enthusiasm.

Knox feels a certain relief on leaving Angus Ross. He has experienced similar feelings over some of his dealings with the natives, who don’t express their emotions in the same profusion as whites, and it is wearing to spend time in the company of those around whom a spontaneous smile feels like a childish weakness.

Sturrock, dressed in a borrowed winter coat, picks his way through the new snow, examining the ground for traces of flight. To his right a man called Edward Mackay is doing exactly the same. On his left, a youth with an alarming Adam’s apple pokes the ground with a long stick. It is, Sturrock is aware, a hopeless task. Everything was done wrongly from the start. When the warehouse holding the prisoner was found empty, the news leaked out like quicksilver, simultaneously in every house in Caulfield, and people rushed out to stare and theorise, obliterating any tracks immediately outside. The powdery snow had started to fall in the night, probably covering all traces in any case, but the numbers of people involved made gleaning any information from the scene impossible.