Patrick White - The Fringe of Leaves

Except that mud had collected on the wheels and spattered the bodywork, the vehicle wore a gloss of paint which disguised bluntness of form in an elegance matching that of the owner himself.

During the longueurs of the voyage out Mr Roxburgh had informed his wife, ‘There is no actual reason for pitying Garnet, though our mother, understandably, always lamented losing her favourite son — yes, let us be realistic — to a hard and morally infected country like Van Diemen’s Land. In fact Garnet has done very well for himself. By marrying a considerably older widow of means, his position in the community became assured. If the woman died not long after, in a regrettable accident, at least he inherited her property, from which, I gather, he has a respectable income.’

‘How did Mrs Garnet Roxburgh die?’

‘In the accident,’ Austin replied, but vaguely, for his mind was occupied with other thoughts.

Driven by the widower through Hobart Town, Ellen returned, if only by an imagined glimpse, to the accident in which Mrs Garnet Roxburgh died.

‘Do you approve?’ she realized her brother-in-law was asking.

‘Of what?’

‘Of our neat little town.’

‘It is that,’ she said. ‘And English. I have difficulty in believing I am being driven through a famous penal colony of the antipodes.’

He laughed. ‘You will soon believe, but need not fear, or feel embarrassed if, like Austin, you are given to embarrassment. The authorities keep the wretches suitably employed, and on the whole, subdued.’

Overhearing himself accused, Austin began to protest that he never experienced embarrassment — well, almost never — and the two brothers were soon engaged in banter and laughter and reminiscence.

Excluded from this, Mrs Roxburgh was able to enjoy her view of the unassuming, while often charming houses, their general effect of modest substance sometimes spoilt by the intrusion of an over-opulent façade. Hens were allowed the freedom of the streets, and an ambling cow almost grazed a wheel of the buggy with her ribs. The scent of the cow’s breath, the thudding of her hooves, and the plop of falling dung, filled Ellen with an immeasurable homesickness. Had it not been for the uncommunicative stares of respectable burgesses and the open scowls of those who must be their slaves, she might have been driving Gluyas’s cart to market.

When they had left the town and were headed for the interior, the two brothers fell silent. Austin had exhausted himself by a detailed description of the monument in the classic style he had personally designed for erection over their mother’s grave. Garnet sighed; a gloom descended on him, less from melancholy regrets than from boredom, Ellen felt; or perhaps it was the prospect of a long visit by members of his family.

In any case he seemed to have grown oblivious of a sister-in-law he had shown no signs of taking seriously. Not that she would have welcomed his serious attentions. She thought she would dislike him even more than she had anticipated. He had about him something which she, the farmer’s daughter and spurious lady, recognized as coarse and sensual. Perhaps this was what she resented, and that a Roxburgh should both embody and remind her of it. As he held the reins in his hands during what had become this monotonous drive, she noticed his thick wrists and the hairs visible on them in the space between glove and cuff. She turned away her head. She more than disliked, she was repelled, not only by the man, but by her own thoughts, which her husband and her late mother-in-law would not have suspected her of harbouring.

To escape from her inner self she looked out across the country, when her attention was caught by a party of men who could only have been some of the ‘wretches’ to whom Garnet Roxburgh had referred. The prisoners were divided into two squads, each engaged in pushing a hand-cart loaded with freshly quarried stone. Armed guards were shouting orders, unintelligible at that distance. The party had but recently emerged from a dip between two slopes. From dragging their carts to the crest of the second, the men were now proceeding to brake, those in front by digging their heels into the hillside, their bodies inclined back against the carts, those behind straining with their whole weight to resist a too-rapid descent. Every face was raised to the sun, teeth bared in sobbing mouths when the lips were not tightly clenched, skin streaming with light and sweat. In contrast to the tanned cheeks and furiously mobile faces, the closed eyes and white eyelids gave the prisoners that expression of unnatural serenity seen in the blind, and which makes them appear all but removed from the life around them.

Mrs Roxburgh was immediately glad of the lowered eyelids, and that the men most probably would not catch sight of her before the buggy rounded a shoulder of the hill ahead. She felt a pang of commiseration through the hardships and indignities suffered during girlhood, but was more intent on avoiding the prisoners’ undoubted resentment of the physical ease and peace of mind they must imagine if they were to open their eyes.

So she clenched her gloved hands, and willed the horses to increase their speed. From brooding, and from biting on her lips, these felt thick and sullen. At least her companions had started a desultory conversation and were too engrossed in the past to notice the work-party of convicts before those unfortunate human beasts were lost to sight.

The landscape through which the travellers were driving was by turns cultivated and wild. An occasional stone cottage or hut built of wattle-and-daub looked the meaner for the tiered forests towering above them. The roads were consistently execrable. The two stout horses lumbered onward, darkened with sweat except where a lather had broken out from the friction of crupper and trace against their coats. Ruts frequently threw the passengers together with a violence which seemed almost personal in its intent.

However she held herself Mrs Roxburgh could not avoid unpleasant contact with her brother-in-law’s nearside shoulder; when suddenly he turned to her. ‘We shall arrive, God willing, for dinner. By which time’, he added, laughing, ‘we should be fairly well acquainted with each other, whether we like it or not.’ It was practically as though her husband his brother had not been there.

If she did not reply in words, she could not very well withhold the semblance of a smile from one in whose glance she recognized the provocative candour of the boy in the miniature. Not to have smiled would have made her appear sour, she thought, or offended by neglect.

Soon afterwards a drizzle started blowing in their faces. Her husband coughed and felt his coat. It was cold for the time of year. Trees in cottage gardens were heavy with unripened fruit.

Garnet Roxburgh apologized that their vehicle lacked a hood. ‘Does the rain inconvenience you?’ he asked her, instead of his obviously fretting brother.

‘Not at all,’ she replied. ‘I am used to it.’

Again, in memory, she was Ellen Gluyas driving her cart to market at Penzance. Had they noticed her smile the Roxburghs might have found irony there.

But they remained unaware, and she was moved to take her husband’s hand. She squeezed it and he looked surprised, wondering at the reason for her gesture.

They toiled on. The drizzle was blown past and behind them. Above an uneven crop of oats, through a gap in darkling trees, hung the faintest smudge of rainbow. She could feel her cheeks glowing, not only from the chill, but from the veiled surprises the country had to offer at every turn. Nor would she let a brother-in-law she must continue to dislike detract from her enjoyment.

‘Here we are,’ Mr Garnet Roxburgh was able at last to announce, ‘at “Dulcet”—if not for dinner, then not long after.’