Patrick White - The Fringe of Leaves

Oswald Dignam was carried out, at best a human sacrifice, at worst an object for which there was no further use. Alternately sucked under and bobbing on the surface, he continued resisting his fate. His arms were raised several times, fists clenched, lips protesting against the mystery of divine prerogative, before the sea put a glassy stopper in his mouth. Although he was still being tossed and turned by surf boiling in and out of submerged potholes, she knew she would never see him again, unless as a wraith to be coerced out of her already over-haunted memory.

The victim of her clothes, her body, and the formless hazards, Ellen Gluyas ran down bellowing towards the water, where a rising wave warned her off. She stood an instant mewing ineffectually, before stuffing a knuckle in her mouth. More forcibly than ever, she was made to feel there was nothing she could do but submit.

But in accordance with the convention human beings are bound to obey even when their rational minds tell them the odds are against them, she was already starting back for help, running, scrambling by uncertain footholds and handfuls of grass, lumbering on, stumbling and falling, limping the last stretch, down to where the crew were methodically repairing the boats.

Her cries elicited only dazed attention from the men who were caulking the long-boat with a mixture of soap, fat, and grass. Three or four appeared to realize what had occurred, but of these only two followed Mr Courtney in response to Mrs Roxburgh’s pleading. The others did not want to hear or know; Oswald Dignam the individual had slipped from the common consciousness as a result of what they had endured and what they might still have to undergo.

Arrived on the crest of the ridge above the scene of the boy’s disappearance, the rescuers slouched back and forth, mumbling, as they searched the open sea with half-closed eyes. Only Mrs Roxburgh knew that it had happened, but could not convince these bemused, if not disbelieving, sailors, let alone spur them on to doing she knew not what.

She was desolated. She felt ill, and only too glad to spend the forenoon resting under a shelter some of the crew improvised for her out of a sail. The smell of crude canvas, of ants, and the attentions of flies made little impression on her. She must have dozed, in company with her swollen belly and the ghosts of her lost children, nor did she remember that she had not set eyes on her husband these several hours.

The caulking of the long-boat was proceeding parallel to, although not in accordance with the first officer’s unsolicited directions, and more intermittently, Captain Purdew’s transcendental hopes, when Mr Roxburgh and Spurgeon came tittuping down towards the work-party. Sharing a secret gave them the expression of guilty drunkards arriving home under a transparent veil of bravado. They were ignored by those more importantly employed, nor did anyone think to inform them of Oswald Dignam’s death, although he had been the steward’s nipper and the cause of Mrs Roxburgh’s inordinate distress. The sailors held their noses closer to their work, while Mr Courtney redoubled his efforts to impose his superfluous authority. As for Captain Purdew, his mind was wafted afresh in search of a salvation which might not be vouchsafed.

‘Had I gone down with her at least. But the Lord won’t overlook my record. Or will He?’ The poor old man stood scanning the unresponsive seascape, his eyes those of a stale mullet.

Mr Roxburgh and Spurgeon continued smiling for their secret mission. Under cover of the general preoccupation it was easy enough to secure a handful of precious soap, while Spurgeon got possession of his hoard of sugar. They then retired to their own more esoteric rites at safe distance from the camp.

Moulding the amalgam of soap and sugar into a pliable ball, Austin Roxburgh grew so rapt he might have been casting a spell into the grubby, sweating mess.

Spurgeon was positively awed. ‘’Ow will we keep ’er in place on me neck?’

‘Wait!’

When the medicament had been reduced to a sufficiently disgusting consistency the physician put it in the patient’s hands, and fishing out the tail of his own good linen shirt, tore a resounding strip from it. The steward’s disbelief in a gentleman’s behaviour expressed itself in open-mouthed breathing which might have sounded like overt snores to anyone breaking in upon them. But nobody intruded on their privacy, and Mr Roxburgh applied the poultice to the inflamed swelling on the steward’s neck, and bound it up, round and round, with the strip of shirt, sighing as he did so; he had come to love Spurgeon’s boil for giving him occasion to discover in himself, if not an occult gift, at least a congratulable virtue.

They sat for a moment looking and not looking at each other, until the patient lowered his eyes to hide a gratitude which was threatening to spill over, and the physician roused himself from the trance in which his will had already induced a show of pus.

‘Well, we shall see, old fellow!’ he said in the brisk cheerful voice of one who had returned to his normal spiritual level and social station.

At the same time Mr Roxburgh realized how tired he was; he yawned like a horse, showing his gums and longish teeth. He felt he had all but dislocated a jaw. One might, he imagined, by too vigorous a yawn. It made him scramble to his feet and remember the wife who had been several hours’ absent from his thoughts.

On reaching camp, Spurgeon a respectful distance behind him, he was directed to the improvised tent, where, he was told, Mrs Roxburgh was resting.

She was more, she was fast asleep it seemed when he lifted the loose canvas flap, prepared to share the tale of the boil and the part he had played — though not its deepest significance; gnostic delicacy would have prevented him revealing the secret of his occult powers. But she continued sleeping, and he lay down somewhat sulkily beside her.

When Mrs Roxburgh started up, and called out, ‘’Twas me! He wudn’ a gone otherwise.’ Eyes still closed, she struck her husband across the mouth with an outflung arm.

Mr Roxburgh winced for the numbing pain; he sneezed too, because his nose had shared the blow. ‘Please, Ellen!’ he protested. ‘Obviously you have been through a nightmare, but I don’t see why I should suffer for it.’

‘No.’ She sat trembling in her returning consciousness. ‘I was not in control of myself.’

The loss of this cabin-boy, which the colours of her dream had transformed into a major bereavement, unloosed in her a need for affinity, a longing to be loved. She was prompted to pour out the tragic story on the one person close enough to respond to her distress; if the current sucked them under, they must rise from the depths revived and strengthened by their love for each other.

So she would have liked it had she not seen that Mr Roxburgh would not. Although recovered from the undignified blow she had dealt him, he had retired, it seemed, to the remotest corner of their relationship, where he lay just perceptibly smiling for what she could not tell. At all events it was not the moment to break the news of Oswald’s death.

Instead, she leaned over him, and drew her mouth across his parted lips, and breathed between them, ‘You know I would not willingly hurt you,’ and he put his arms round her, and she rocked him and cherished him, which appeared to be what he expected, and her distress at the boy’s death was temporarily assuaged.

The light had almost wholly withdrawn from their suffocating canvas shelter. She must have slept, and Mr Roxburgh was still audibly asleep beside her. Outside, men’s voices, Captain Purdew’s, Mr Courtney’s, and less frequently, Mr Pilcher’s, were discussing a plan for the morning. The captain’s intention was to head for the mainland, and after making landfall, to set course for Moreton Bay, always keeping inshore out of consideration for the scarcely seaworthy long-boat and the constant need of replenishing their limited water supply.