At the end of the morning, after the school-room had disgorged its rabble of relieved children, Miss Scrimshaw came to Mrs Roxburgh’s door. ‘I should have warned you,’ she said, ‘Captain Lovell is returning early from the Commissariat, and would like the opportunity of talking to you before we dine. He must write the report for His Excellency.’
‘I can hardly refuse him, can I?’ Mrs Roxburgh replied.
‘That is for you to decide.’ Miss Scrimshaw enjoyed the dependence of others but saw to it that they did not abuse the relationship.
‘How have you occupied yourself this morning?’ she asked with less acerbity.
‘I have sat and watched the light changing, and listened to the sounds of an unfamiliar house.’
‘In that way also, I expect one can learn something.’ Miss Scrimshaw laughed. ‘In any case I shall fetch you when the Commandant arrives.’
Without expressing active disapproval she left Mrs Roxburgh to her passive pursuits.
The prisoner had in fact experienced twinges of conscience for her own inactivity. She had been roused from lethargy at one stage by the feeling that somebody was about to pinch or even strike her for not having joined in the search for yams or the chopping of fern- roots. She knew, however, that it was more important to avoid ambush by those endowed with guile. For she heard on and off the footsteps, the voices, of morning callers. Mrs Lovell was entertaining the ladies of the garrison, all of them doubtless kind, and at the same time inquisitive.
And now the Commandant.
He received her standing in the centre of a room which might have impressed had she been more impressionable, and had she not suffered the same fate as the furniture, of covering great distances and ending up battered, scratched, dusty, though still with a hint of having enjoyed more pretentious circumstances. There was a smell of must from a worn, dust-impregnated carpet mingling with the scents of citrus and guava which strayed in from beyond the veranda. Bars of sunlight prevented her distinguishing the less aggressive, original design woven into the threadbare carpet, just as gilt grilles would have deterred her had she been inclined to investigate the rows of rigidly aligned books. But dear life, she had never been bookish unless to please others, and the Commandant would not have been pleased. He frowned, and closed his watch. The family dined at three, she had heard. He would have a good two hours in which to torture his victim if he chose.
At the beginning he was out to charm. ‘I trust you are rested, Mrs Roxburgh?’ He smiled at her from under sandy eyebrows, and manœuvred a heavy, claw-footed chair.
She thanked her adversary. The chair was so wide across its crackled seat that she now sat stranded in the middle of it, gripping for support at carving which she felt had been polished by hands sweating as nervously as hers.
If the Commandant was not exactly nervous he appeared more hesitant than one would have expected in a man of his authority. ‘As you must understand, I have my report to write for the Governor, on the circumstances of the wreck, your survival, and recovery. So,’ he sighed, digging an elbow into his desk, ‘I’d be glad to hear your account, if it will not open wounds which have healed. I would like to think that this can be—achieved without causing you unnecessary distress.’ He was looking somewhat congested for the effort, and although he had renewed his smile, it was directed at the blank sheet of paper before him.
‘Nobody — nothing — could distress me — not by now, Captain Lovell.’ If her claim was brazen, at least she would not look in his direction; it was the line of his cheek, his rather coarse wrists, which might open old wounds.
‘Then’, he said, ‘tell me in your own words what happened.’ She could scarcely accuse him of not being liberal.
‘Well,’ she considered, lowering her head, tasting her underlip with her tongue, ‘we were shipwrecked as you know — as you have heard from this other survivor.’ She felt herself perspiring intolerably. ‘What can I tell you,’ she gasped, ‘if you already know?’ It was not an argument to satisfy a man.
She must not look at the Commandant, but reserve her eyes as weapons in some passage at arms which called for greater subtlety. Instead she sat staring at her own hands held at the level of the cobalt sash, amongst the heart’s-ease, as though she had the stomach-ache, and no matter if he thought her feeble-minded.
The Commandant was contained by patience. ‘It’s by hearing different versions of the same incident that we arrive at the truth, Mrs Roxburgh, in any court.’
‘Oh,’ she cried, ‘I was never in court. Perhaps that’s why I was never sure whether I’d arrived at the truth — whatever the incident, Captain Lovell. For all that, I survived.’
She would have liked to glance at him, but thought that she might not have the strength.
She continued, while hanging her head. ‘My husband was killed. Yes, that is truth — a wound which perhaps will never heal. The blood gushing as I pulled the spear from his throat! I shall always remember the glare, the flies.’
The Commandant was making judicious notes.
‘Then the blacks marched the crew away.’ She wet her lips; she could not resist asking what hitherto she had not wished to know, ‘I wonder who is your other survivor?’
But the Commandant was conducting the court martial of a woman, one as disturbing as she was disturbed. ‘The blacks — did they treat you kindly?’ He spoke with what amounted to delicacy in anyone so exalted, and at the same time, coarse-boned.
She must not look at him, as she had decided in the beginning.
‘Well,’ she began afresh, but paused, ‘they were not unkindly — considering they had been fired on. Oh yes, poor Mr Courtney opened fire — the first mate. Several members of the tribe were killed. So they killed Captain Purdew — and Mr Roxburgh — in retaliation. No,’ she added, ‘I would say they treated me — reasonably — well. Of course they beat and pinched, and held fire-sticks under me, to frighten me into climbing trees for ’possums and maggoty old honey. There was also a disgusting child they wanted me to suckle, but I could not. I was dried off. I could not have fed the one I lost at sea.’
It was the Commandant who was disgusted; she could sense that.
‘Oh, I don’t blame the blacks! The child died. It would have done, even had it not been disgusting. So I was not to blame, neither. Now was I?’
He kept a silence through which she heard the action of his quill.
‘No one is to blame, and everybody, for whatever happens.’ Further than that she could not lumber.
‘What else?’
They had arrived at the tortuous part of the journey.
‘Oh,’ she raised her head, her throat, in which the veins would be standing out she suspected; she drew in her nostrils until they must be looking all gristle, ‘the black children! The children were not as spiteful as they had been taught by their elders. We would play at purru purru …’
‘Purru purru?’ Captain Lovell sounded his gravest, his most official.
‘Ball,’ she answered. ‘We used to skip, too. I sang to them.’
‘What did you sing?’ It was as though he were determined to commit an indecency.
She could not remember, so she resolved to forgive him. ‘Some nonsense or other.’ (Not Go, deceiver, go! that was later, surely? and to someone else.) ‘It was while we were crossing to the mainland, and the children were frightened by the rough sea. Yes,’ she decided, ‘it must have been then.’
‘And when you arrived?’
By now it was the middle of the day. The Commandant was sweating; it trickled down over the neck of his tunic, which he was too correct to unhook. Mrs Roxburgh’s muslin was damp; the cobalt sash showed a high-water mark.