Patrick White - The Fringe of Leaves

Mrs Roxburgh did as she was told; the steam made her eyes water. Holly too, was red about the eyes and had lost something of her original gloss. Under the shapeless grey gown, Mrs Roxburgh thought she could detect an ampler figure. The material ghosts of ‘Dulcet’ were running the gauntlet of Mrs Dormer’s scorn. So Mrs Roxburgh lowered her eyes.

The circlets of fat on the surface of the soup would surely have displeased her husband. ‘Is there ever,’ she began, but gave up on scalding her palate and the back of her throat. ‘Escaped prisoners,’ she tried it out afresh, ‘do they ever survive to enjoy their freedom?’

‘Not for long,’ replied Garnet Roxburgh with evident approval. ‘They are either shot in escaping, or brought back soon after for appropriate punishment and another term. A few of the bolters turn bushranger for a while, but are usually caught, and strung up beside the highroad as a warning.’

It was much as she had imagined while hoping to be told that freedom sometimes exchanges abstraction for reality.

Holly had removed the soup-tureen and brought an exceptionally fine fish, which Mr Roxburgh served as though not doing so.

His guest choked on a bone, but asked, ‘What is it, Mr Roxburgh?’

‘What? Oh, the fish. A trumpeter, I think. Yes, trumpeter.’

He sighed and ate, and ate and sighed. Holly fetched candles.

‘This morning’, Mrs Roxburgh ventured, ‘I heard gunfire — and such a cry, I can hear it still. Would it have been one of these wretches, delivered — whether mercifully or not — out of his misery?’

Garnet Roxburgh’s jaws worked; his lips ejected a fragment of fish-skin. ‘It was the mare — Merle — who staked herself so badly it would not have been practical to keep her. We can’t afford to carry cripples.’ His forehead seemed to swell as his jaws set motionless; his hands, which she so much loathed, and for one obsessed instant, had desired, threatened to send his knife and fork skittering across the plate.

Her own cutlery she laid together before extricating herself from her chair.

‘Well?’ he all but shouted. ‘Who is to blame — but us all? Eh, Ellen?’ He had jumped up after she had risen, and come round the table to thrust himself at her. ‘I’m told you are planning to leave us to our festering!’

He was grasping, not so much at her hand, as for some immaterial support he had no hope of finding.

In refusing him her hand, she uttered, ‘I can’t make excuses for my own weakness — or ignorance. I still have not learnt enough to help myself, let alone others.’

She did not look at him again, but left the room.

Mr Austin Roxburgh was most disturbed on noticing his wife’s pallor. ‘It is you who are ill, Ellen!’

She was in fact a shambles of disgust, anger, and despair, both for the slaughter of the little horse, which she could only interpret as an act of deliberate cruelty, and for the human souls condemned to the torments of this island on which they too, had the misfortune to find themselves.

‘These wretched creatures for whom there is so little hope!’ She could not bring herself to mention the mare, for whose end she held herself responsible.

Austin Roxburgh might have moralized to console his wife had it not meant going against what he saw as retribution and justice.

Instead, in the morning, he devised an outing which he hoped would restore her spirits. The day was so clear and sunny he asked for a horse to be harnessed to the gig, and proposed that they should drive out together.

Austin Roxburgh drove like the upright man he was. It was unusual for him to take the reins, but he appeared to derive such pleasure from their innocent jaunt she could not demand that they change places.

They took the road along the riverside, where the grass was already strewn with the gold coin of poplar leaves. Fish leaped from time to time, or like thoughts rising, mouthed the surface of the stippled water.

‘We must do this more often, Ellen,’ Mr Roxburgh decided, ‘when we are at home again — at Cheltenham.’

His desire to atone for the minor lapses, and ignorance of the major ones, made the morning glitter more perilously. She could only sit as upright as himself, when in less tenuous circumstances her body might have adopted some of the attitudes of self-indulgence.

Mrs Roxburgh was delivered to some extent from the nagging of her conscience on reaching the house and being handed a note which a messenger had brought from Dr Aspinall. Standing on the veranda steps the Roxburghs read the letter together; here at last was a guilt they could share.

A Mrs Impey, a widow in reduced circumstances, the doctor informed them, was prepared to put three of her rooms at his friends’ disposal. Her establishment, a modest one he was careful to add, was situated nevertheless in a most respectable locality.

Mrs Roxburgh was overjoyed, though her husband at once showed signs of anxiety, if not downright alarm. ‘Now we shall have to tell him,’ he said. ‘Will you?’

‘No,’ she replied. ‘He knows!’ She then began to laugh in a manner which might have struck him as ‘hysterical’ in another woman.

‘Who could have told him?’

‘I have no inkling,’ it was not entirely true, ‘and since it is done, I shall make no inquiries.’ Despite a disapproval she could sense mounting, she continued laughing; she took herself in hand only after they had gone inside.

Mrs Roxburgh, who had lost the inclination for writing in her journal, recovered it:

24 March

Hobart Town

… the house so small, the rooms so narrow, we might feel restricted had we not grown accustomed to ship-conditions on the voyage out. I shld also say, if it was not for relief at escaping from the gloom of ‘ Dulcet ’! So I am prepared to love our little house at Battery Point, and Mr R. is for similar reasons willing to overlook its limitations. We have the use of two front rooms. One is a dining-room, the other a parlour, or what our landlady likes to refer to as the withdrawing -room. Off this is our bedroom, most fortunately placed, because this will be my withdrawing-room in the event of unwanted callers. Mrs Impey is a small, bright person full of the best intentions. She is the widow of a former officer of the garrison at Port Arthur where she spent some years with her husband. When questioned about Port A. she held forth on its magnificent situation. As for the penal settlement, she says many of the stories are grossly exagerated by those who look for the sensational in life. Mrs Impey, I suspect, is too bright to admit any shadows into her scheme. Asked her whether she had not felt moved to return home after burying her husband. Here she did look a little downcast for one so bright, and said it was difficult for a woman to acquire the habit of making important decisions. Then she cheered up again, said that she enjoyed the society of Hobart Town, and so as not to lead a wholly frivolous life, gave lessons in needlework to selected young ladies of the better class.

26 Mar

Mr R.’s health improves daily. He already speaks of leaving if we can find a berth. We are told we can expect a ship at the end of the month or early next. Will be overjoyed if rumours become fact. Dr A. decided I was looking peeky and prescribed a tonic which I will take to humour him and my husband. I have to confess that my spirits are low, but at a level which no tonic can reach. A wind blows daily off the mountain along streets for the most part empty, in which approaching footsteps often alarm by sounding thunderous. Mercifully G. R. has until now left us in peace, except for the present of a dressed goose and 4 bottles of ‘Dulcet’ wine. Remembering how we ate goose out first night beneath his roof I could not bring myself to touch it. My excuse was that I felt bilious. Mr R. did justice by the goose, and ever since has been chiding himself for ingratitude towards his brother.