‘I would like to offer you something, but am myself no more than a guest of the house.’ Thus absolved, the great lady dangled a wrist over the arm of her chair.
‘There is nothing,’ he assured her, ‘nothing I need.’
Now that both had done their duty by society, and established their bona fides as far as is humanly possible, Mrs Roxburgh looked at her caller and made the decidedly brutal request, ‘You must tell me all that has happened to you since last we met.’
She meant to encourage her visitor, or anyway, in some measure, but on hearing her own voice was reminded of the black swans encountered while living with her adoptive tribe. It was the same hissing as when the birds arched their necks, and extended their bills, spatulate and crimson, making ready to protect themselves against the intruder.
Although Mrs Roxburgh felt, and must have looked, pale in her black, she wondered how Mr Pilcher found her, but could not tell since he had launched into a narrative.
‘You’ll remember after we put out from the cay — after our attempt at caulking — the storm got up and separated our two boats.’
Mrs Roxburgh realized he did not intend her to answer, but she did. ‘Yes,’ she said gravely, ‘I could not easily forget.’
Like a good navigator, Mr Pilcher would not allow himself to be distracted. ‘Well,’ he continued, ‘we was blown south at such a bat I’d not of been surprised had we landed up on a second reef. Particularly with the crew I’d got — all the rawest from Bristol Maid.’
Mrs Roxburgh remembered the hairs bristling on the humps of the bosun’s great toes, but decided against resurrecting the bosun. She saw that Mr Pilcher chose to manipulate the details and the persons in his life, at least since the parting from the sluggish long-boat. She rather envied the mate for having become his own guiding spirit. The details of her life had been chosen for her by whoever it is that decides.
‘Without charts and in such a gale, it wasn’t possible to navigate. I can only say’, Mr Pilcher said, ‘we must of been favoured by Providence.’
Becoming conscious of her stare, he lashed his hands round one of his emaciated knees.
‘We were lucky enough to find ourselves, when the storm abated, off a part of the coast where the pinnace could be easily beached. And glad I was to be rid of ’er. The sea, too. Never no more will I go to sea.’
He coughed, and hid the result in a handkerchief. He could not have been sure whether his audience was frowning at his decision to renounce a vocation, or simply disapproving of a dirty habit.
His voice grated and wavered. ‘From then on, we lived off the land so to say, and times was less lean, though often we went short. You get to hate one another when you’re hungry.’
‘Yes,’ she agreed, while thinking that only a man could be so self-absorbed and boring.
But because her mother-in-law had taught her that a lady’s role in life is to listen, she leaned sideways and propped her chin on a receptive hand.
‘Some was for droring lots, to decide which of ’em ’twould be, but I wouldn’t have no part in that.’
‘And what about your companions? Did they favour eating one another?’
Mr Pilcher swallowed. ‘Some of ’em was eaten.’
Mrs Roxburgh might have been thinking the mate had never looked so loathsome.
He told her confidentially. ‘The blacks consider the hands are the greatest delicacy.’
‘Did you try?’ Mrs Roxburgh asked.
Mr Pilcher became so agitated he rose from his chair and began patrolling the room. ‘I ask you,’ he said at last, ‘Mrs Roxburgh — would you?’
‘I don’t know. It would depend, I expect.’
Since she was caught in her own net, and Mr Pilcher had subsided again, she found herself struggling to her feet. Pain in one leg, or the root of an invisible tree, all but tripped her.
Looking up from the vantage of an easy chair the mate ventured to suggest, ‘I bet you had a tough time yourself, Mrs Roxburgh — before the rescue.’
She answered, ‘Yes.’ As though the rescue ever takes place!
‘They say you lived among the blacks.’
‘That is so — and learned a great deal, of which I should otherwise remain ignorant.’
She was standing with her back to him after finding the looking-glass she had known must exist in Mrs Lovell’s lesser parlour. Thus stationed, she could watch Pilcher while hidden from him, seated as he was at a lower level. Yet in the end the disadvantage was hers: she was faced with her own over-watchful reflection.
‘And was brought to the settlement by some bushranger, or bolted convict, I am told.’
‘I was so fortunate.’
‘Who bolted again, just when he might have expected justice.’
‘He became frightened. That — I hope — was his only reason for running away. Though the truth is often many-sided, and difficult to see from every angle. You will appreciate that, Mr Pilcher, having experienced the storm which separated the pinnace from the long-boat.’
She would have expected a wave of malice to rise in the man she remembered aboard Bristol Maid, and again, the evening on the cay, but he only murmured, ‘That is true,’ looking old and ravaged.
‘So,’ she said, after she had turned, ‘I hope we can accept each other’s shortcomings, since none of us always dares to speak the truth. Then we might remain friends.’
His eyes, watery from the moment when he entered the room, had started running.
‘Friendship is all I have left since my husband was speared to death on the island. I forget, if I ever knew, whether you have a wife, Mr Pilcher?’
From snivelling, he hardened, as though frozen by a vision of the past. ‘Yes, he said, ‘I had. But did not love her as I undertook. I was ashamed, I suppose, by what I must have thought a weakness. That is how she died, I can see.’
He sat rocking in recollection.
‘Love was weakness. Strength of will—wholeness, as I saw it — is what I was determined to cultivate. That is why I admired you, Mrs Roxburgh — the cold lady, the untouchable.’
‘I believed you hated me — and for what I never was.’
‘So I did — your gentleman husband too — and was glad at the time to see you both brought down to the same level as the rest of us. And stole your ring.’
‘I gave it to you.’
‘Look,’ he said, feeling in a waistcoat pocket, ‘I’ve brought it back, the ring I took.’
There it was, glittering in the half-light, the nest of all but black garnets.
‘Keep it,’ she said. ‘I have no use for it.’
‘Nor me neether,’ the man insisted, as though the ring disgusted him.
So she took it from between his tremulous fingers and, going to the window, threw it into the nasturtiums below, where the broad leaves closed over it. ‘A child will find it,’ she said, ‘and value it as a plaything. Or it could be of service to some gardener — after his release.’
She laughed to ease the situation. ‘Thank you, Mr Pilcher, for coming to see me. I hope we shall meet again before I sail from Moreton Bay.’
But she did not believe either of them truly wished it.
In the absence of prisoners, guards, witnesses, and inquisitors, early morning was an extenuating benison, especially when the young Lovells broke in, climbed upon the bed, snuggled against her, and insisted on tales of the black children she had known. Innocence prevailed in the light from the garden, and for the most part in her recollections; black was interchangeable with white. Surely in the company of children she might expect to be healed?
‘Were they good?’ asked a Lovell boy.
‘Well, yes — not always perhaps, but at heart.’ Was it not the truth behind the scratches and pinches they administered in accordance with their parents’ orders? She remembered the eyes of the black children.