The Secret Fate of Mary Watson (8 page)

My quick wit dog-paddles frantically, trying to keep an inch ahead of him. ‘On the contrary. Because I have few years behind me, I have many more before me. I may make any number of new starts in my lifetime.’

Silence descends, for perhaps five painful minutes. I don’t allow myself to fidget. I resist the urge to jump in with further justifications. I do have time, however, to ungag my internal voice of caution and listen to its slightly hysterical opinion that my sane mind’s been sent on a slow boat to China.

‘It might work,’ he allows finally. ‘You certainly seem cold and logical enough.’

I don’t mind
logical
. But
cold
? Hardly a compliment. And
he
should talk!

‘It would certainly be a further test of that ingenuity you love to exercise,’ he adds.

I open my mouth to thank him, then close it again. There’s never a chink in his armour, no place on that hard face or body for any softness to land. Besides, he hasn’t really committed himself one way or the other.

He stands smoothly, with none of the awkwardness most people experience trying to lift themselves from a lounge chair, and walks over to a small window that looks out on the night.

I remember something then. And wonder if I’m not signing Charley Boule’s death warrant with my next words.

‘I must tell you, Captain, Charley has asked me to deliver some messages for him. He’s at least partially aware of what you’re doing. He knows that I gather information for you. I think he knew from the moment Percy recommended me as a piano player.’

‘What are his messages about?’

His voice comes unsurprised from the shadows. He doesn’t seem even slightly disturbed that Charley might have sniffed out the rudiments of his operation. That fact alone tells me that my intuition is right. French Charley’s, as a base for gathering information, is fast outliving its usefulness to Roberts. And if I don’t pursue this risky new bet, then so will I.

‘I don’t know. I’ve made it clear I’ve no intention of delivering the notes.’

‘Go ahead, do what he asks. Just make a copy of any message he gives you and pass it on. To me, personally, when next I’m in town. Along with anything else you find … significant. Boule is a gnat trying to pierce the hide of an elephant. I’ll know if he causes any real trouble. I am, however, interested in any talk of further expeditions to New Guinea.’

‘Percy mentioned that. But I haven’t picked up on anything. Why would you want Charley to stay away from New Guinea?’ There I go again. ‘Sorry …’

He walks back into the light and takes his seat again. Apparently the subject isn’t especially delicate. His tone is light. ‘The French are establishing themselves in the New Hebrides: buying up the best land from natives and Europeans alike. But it’s the Germans who want New Guinea. This is a delicate time in European diplomacy. Disraeli’s still in office, but word is that his time is over. The Grand Old Man will be prime minister again next year.’ He lifts one booted foot and rests it on his knee. ‘Gladstone is particularly reluctant to provoke German sensibilities, and England wants no part of New Guinea. But it’s clear they’ll be forced to intervene if — no, when — the Germans go too far. In the meantime, men like Boule are an accelerant. If they’re allowed to collect the kindling and keep feeding the fire, that is.’

‘But Charley’s French, not German.’

‘You must have gleaned something of his character by now.’ His mouth twists slightly. ‘Boule knows everything there is to know about whoring. Makes his decisions not out of patriotism so much as the proud tradition of selling himself to the highest bidder. The question then becomes: which of two undesirable clients will he lie down with in order to turn the most profit? He figures, quite rightly, that he’ll be in a better position to exploit New Guinea if the Germans take control. England wouldn’t tolerate his like.’

I digest this. It would explain Roberts’s occasional ‘pirating’. He is probably a privateer. German expansion into New Guinea would necessitate all sorts of maritime traffic, and the British flag would be unwelcome. A privateer could disrupt those activities without adverse political implication.

He draws a piece of paper from his pocket and holds it out to me. ‘Fuller will be on the Lizard most of the time from now on. If something happens that requires our urgent attention, send a telegram to this address with the message:
Your new saddle has just arrived
.’

I take the paper and slip it into the pocket of my skirt.

‘Otherwise, I’ll see you next time I’m in town,’ he says. ‘Do you have anything else to tell me?’

‘Only more about the French gnat, I’m afraid.’

I tell him about the Chinese junk some weeks back that docked with, so the rumour went, opium charcoal for the goldfields. It was well known that the Chinese diggers handed it out to the blacks to burn on their fires. Once they were addicted and docile, they could be bribed into ambushing European camps. What was new was that Charley had shown an unhealthy interest in the whole
illicit venture, and I suspected he was somehow sponsoring the operation.

Roberts sighs deeply. ‘Where’s Fahey when you need him?’

‘Organising another ball?’

He nods. It’s a long-running joke in Cooktown, dragged out when Bartley Fahey, now the water police magistrate, pays no attention to what’s going on at the docks. The original ball in question, given mainly for the benefit of the upper classes on the hill behind Cooktown, was organised when Fahey held a position as sub-collector of customs. The size and grandeur of the event is still talked about; including the extravagance of shipping in tons of ice from Townsville for the occasion.

‘Good enough,’ Roberts says. ‘You’d best get back to work.’ He dismisses me with a curt nod.

There’s nothing to do but leave. I think he’s forgotten about Lizard Island, the signalling job, but when I’m almost at the door he delivers his last words on the subject.

‘It’s clear that you understand the further you go in this operation, the more money there is to be made. Have you considered, however, that the deeper your involvement, the more you have to lose?’

7TH DECEMBER 1879

‘You frightened the life out of me!’

The next night, I’m almost home from work, dodging mud puddles, when he steps out of the shadows in oversized boots. I recognise the warm conversation mints on his breath, but the battered old muleskin coat and cabbage-tree hat are unfamiliar. In the dark, the effect is sinister, his face almost hidden by the brim.

‘You’ve put your trust in the wrong man.’ His voice is a low growl.

The aftermath of a storm drips warm pencil-lengths from the eaves of the Federal Hotel. Gaslight catches his twitching hands.

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

Fingers close around my wrist. ‘You only think he’s on your side.’ His voice sounds older, more confident. Then I realise the habitual stammer is absent, as if he’s drawing power from the anonymity of the dark. It’s enough to give me pause.

‘Who, Heccy? Who is it I can’t trust?’

‘He’s killed before. He’d kill you now, if he thought he could get away with it.’

‘Who?!’

But he doesn’t say. Just tips his face forward so it’s totally eclipsed by the brim of the hat. For a moment I think he intends to kiss me, or perhaps bite me. Then he jerks back.

‘Let me go!’ I tell him.

The handcuff-grip unlocks, and a flood of pins and needles rushes in. I rub the skin. Breathe out. Look up, but he’s gone. Dissolved back into the alley as if he’s never been.

The thunder moves north, shaking the last coins in its collection box.

Three nights later Bob says: ‘I’m no good with the airs and graces of courting.’

He kissed me just seconds ago, on the cool sand near the tied-up boats in the harbour. Under a moon like a huge blister pearl with black fingers trawling over it. I’d closed my eyes. Tasted pipe tobacco. The vague seaweed undertow of the ocean. Pretended it was Percy.

‘I like the common touch,’ I tell him, my lips still smarting from his bristles. ‘When I think of your skin fitting, it’s not here in Cooktown. But in a more primitive place. Your island, maybe. Or the middle of the ocean.’

I hold up the toy monkey he bought me, lolling on its stick,
to the moon’s light. Its smile seems leerish, surrounded by apricot cheeks, red jacket and black bow tie. The outfit of some voodoo doll.

We’ve spent the evening strolling through Chinatown, by the water. Wandering the narrow, covered alleys flaring with lanterns and banners. He led me, two fingers in the small of my back. Past the pyramids of oranges and apples. The counter with its enormous glass jars of fish-shaped sweets.

‘I’ve tried them,’ I admitted when he offered me some. ‘They taste like sweetened beeswax seals on the backs of important letters.’

Bob asked how long I’d been nibbling on bits of Her Majesty’s post.

I said it wasn’t much different to licking stamps.

He chuckled, steering me casually away from the opening in the opium tent, where the toothless man with small knives in his eyes handed out pieces of dripping sugarcane.

He bought the toy from the very last stall.

Now, his medicinal balls chatter amongst themselves, considering my comment.

‘Aye,’ he says. ‘The cloth of my skin don’t fit right in Cooktown.’

The ocean in the distance keeps opening the same bottle of fizzy water. Pouring out a glass, then putting the stopper back in.

Bob sniffs the air. ‘A good fisherman can scent a patch of slugs twenty miles away.’

‘What do they smell like?’

He smiles crookedly. ‘I never said I was a good fisherman.’ He sniffs, and his nostrils flare. ‘It’s not the slugs themselves, but the fast-running tide that goes with them.’

‘I know the ocean smells stronger when there’s an onshore breeze, but that’s not the same thing, is it?’

‘No.’ Suddenly earnest, he takes my hands in his. The monkey dangles between us. ‘Ye’re like a breath of fresh air, Mary. Ye smell like flowers. Not hothouse blooms, but those tough, no-nonsense ones that grow by the roadside, drinking up the sun.’

‘Must be my new perfume, Caprice,’ I say. I test the aroma of the air myself and decide it’s ripe for revelation. ‘Have there been other women in your life, Bob?’

He stares out to sea. The edges of the stars are softer than usual. And brighter. Pasted onto the sky with watery cornflour glue. I can almost hear the mainsail in his head creak as it stretches back into the distant past.

‘The fairer sex have always wanted something from me,’ he says. ‘I’ve been played a fool many times. I’ve always had a soft spot for a bonny face.’

‘I see,’ I say, and inwardly yawn. Clearly I haven’t been specific enough.

He guides me gently around so that I’m bathed in moonlight. Follows the wings of my eyebrows, then the rest of my features. I endure the scrutiny, teeth clenched.

‘Do ye mind me saying? It would soften yer looks no end if ye didn’t pull yer hair quite so tight away from yer face.’

‘Do you think so?’

‘I do find ye bonny, it’s just …’ Instead of only his foot, this time he shoves his leg into his mouth, all the way up to the kneecap. ‘Anyway, look at the Germans. They don’t value beauty in their wives. It’s strength, thrift, good nature and obedience that count.’

‘You forgot youth.’ If my voice were any drier he could strike a match on it.

‘I know it’s too early to ask. But do ye think we might … That
is, I know full well ye’re half my age. But ye seem so different to other girls.’

I hear the strange, excited chatter of Chinamen plying their wares in the distance. The exotic wafts of cooking: onions, shrimp paste. A repeated chipping-metal sound: some bird in an invisible tree. Light and shadow play across Bob’s damaged face.

‘I’ve heard some talk, Bob. About a woman you knew on the goldfields. She disappeared a year ago.’

Seconds play out. Water slaps its washing against wharf pylons. The bruised mass of the sky moves its grudge closer.

‘That nonsense again. Who says so?’

The wind’s winding up. I raise my voice just a little to compensate. ‘It doesn’t matter who. But why is it nonsense?’

‘A case of mistaken identity.’ His medicinal balls make an abandoned sound, like the sign outside a deserted inn clanking in the breeze. ‘A slug fisherman from Barrow Point had a sable belle for years. She ran away from him. Ended up on the goldfields, then was never seen again. Ye know how stories go. I was on the goldfields for a time. Now I’m a slug fisherman. Seeing most lips that pass loose talk are numb from drink, it’s not really surprising they’d think it me.’

The delivery is smooth. Only a trained ear could hear the small squeak of a tight new shoe.

‘Why would a native woman who runs away from a white man be noteworthy?’ I ask. ‘If it were the other way around …’

I’m thinking of the naked, white Normandy woman, the one whom diggers on the goldfields have seen on and off for years. No one’s found out how she came to live among the natives. Or why.

‘There was some trouble from her tribe. Threats to kill the fellow. I really can’t say.’

It could be river water kicked up by the wind that’s peppering my arms. Or the dirt flung off Bob’s spade as he digs himself a deeper hole.

‘Ye must believe me, Mary. I’d never stoop so low.’

He’s pensive on the brisk walk back. His medicinal balls have fallen silent. But he does lift a damp frond out of my way and warns me to watch my step as we clamber up the gravelly slope to Charlotte Street. We step onto the nearest verandah just as tumult descends. The nails-on-tin above our heads means we now have to shout.

‘I have to go.’ Bob pulls his coat up over his head. ‘I have to speak with Will Hartley. He’s the merchant who handles my slugs. Do ye want to climb Grassy Hill the day after tomorrow?’ There’s a gleam in his good eye. A definite challenge. ‘If ye’re up to it.’

‘Oh, I’m up to it. You’ll find I’m up to almost anything.’ Amazing how confident I sound, even to my own ears.

With a last crooked smile and a flick of his forked tongue, he pulls his coat down tighter on his head, leaps off the verandah and runs headlong into the rain.