Patrick White - The Fringe of Leaves

Mr Courtney promptly agreed; Mr Pilcher was more hesitant.

When asked to declare his reservations, he answered, ‘I agree — yes — to anythin’ that be — reasonable, and water’s as important as anythin’.’ His reply was reasonable too, but for some reason, Mrs Roxburgh sensed, discouraging.

Although it was of the greatest importance that the men should plan the future, the exclusively male tenor of their conference began to bore her, especially since the talk of water had aggravated an intolerable thirst which was becoming her own pressing concern.

Forgetting the height of the tent, she rose to her feet, but was forced to her knees, and to crawling on all fours through the opening. Her hair, to which she no longer gave thought, hung round her face in ropes and mats, while her heavy skirt dragged behind her, ploughing a track through the sand such as the tail of some giant lizard might leave. Seated round the chart they were studying with such evident concentration, the men did not appear to find the figure of a woman on all fours in any way incongruous, if, in their present employment, they noticed her at all.

On getting to her feet Mrs Roxburgh walked discreetly past, under cover of her hair, in the direction of the boats. Here again, a group of sailors stretched on the sand paid no attention to her, but continued moodily pitching chunks of coral at the sea while talking in low voices, and by short bursts, of home and food.

Because her purpose in being there was the dubious one of looking for and appropriating the pannikin they had used in the long-boat, Mrs Roxburgh could not very well take exception to their lack of interest. She was only surprised that she could pass unnoticed, for the waning light had magnified the objects on which it was lingering, such as the great knob of porous coral with the tattered chart spread out upon it, and their normally loose-jointed, fragile boats. An illusion of light had changed the latter into a pair of louring hulks, just as the same tinkering process had moved the scrub significantly closer, emphasized the washed-out colours in the litter of broken shells, deepened the lines in Mr Pilcher’s cheeks, and was drawing attention to the least hair in the tufts on a sailor’s toes. As she slipped past in her unkempt condition she imagined she must have looked like some matted retriever or water-spaniel up to no good.

Particularly nosing round the boats, she felt herself guided by an instinct for cunning. If her design was not wholly dishonest, for not being altogether selfish (she did look forward to fetching water for the unpractical man who depended on her) it remained inadmissible according to Captain Purdew’s code. So she was driven to slink, in her spoiled clothes roughed up like a retriever’s coat, the lappets of her hair hanging and swinging like a spaniel’s silly ears as she searched.

She came across what she needed amongst the tackle jettisoned from the long-boat before the caulking operation was begun. She hid the pannikin under her shawl, and had soon resumed her slinking, through a light which accused whatever it illuminated.

Here and there birds flew skirring out of bushes, or in one case, opened its beak and hissed at her from a grass nest in a hollow in the sand. Farther on, she found a nest unoccupied, and fell upon her knees beside it, and broke open one of the eggs, inside it a putrefying embryo, from which she tore herself near to retching, tripping on the hem of her skirt as she lumbered off.

Under divine guidance, she was prepared to believe, she was brought to a rock saucer in which water shone, sweet moreover when she tasted it. She dipped her shawl and wrung it into the tin cup, and only sucked the woollen fringes which had sopped the water out of the rock. Yet farther afield she came upon other pools, as well as mere hints of moisture, all of which she sopped up, wringing out the water into the pannikin.

She was standing thoughtfully sucking at the fringe of her shawl when she heard footsteps behind her, and a voice breaking the silence.

‘What is Mrs Roxburgh up to?’

Without turning she knew it to be Mr Pilcher; no one else could have aimed such scorn at a target which met with his disapproval.

When she turned to face him she made no attempt to hide the half-filled pannikin; Mr Pilcher’s instinct would surely have told him of its whereabouts.

‘The gentry foragin’ for ’emselves, eh?’ he commented as soon as he saw.

‘Surely it will harm no one if I take my husband — who is in poor health — half a cup of rainwater?’

‘People like your old man, with all time on ’is ands, can afford to enjoy imaginitis.’

He reached out, took the pannikin from her, and drained it.

‘That’s what I think of the both of ’ee.’ He returned the mug. ‘Anybody’s rights be as good as yours.’

‘If that is how you feel,’ she conceded, while her Cornish self struggled to restrain its temper. ‘you must obey your principles. They are mine too, I expect, and rainwater is free for anyone to take — if they’re so disposed.’

‘Then you can fill me another mugful — disposed or not.’

‘I am not your servant.’

‘If we’re not eaten by the maggots or the sharks, you may be yet. There’s few servants didn’t own to more ’n one master.’

‘What in life has hurt you to leave you so embittered?’

‘Not embittered — practical — for seein’ what the likes of you persuade ’emselves don’t exist.’

‘You too, are given to imagining,’ Mrs Roxburgh said. ‘I am not all that you believe, for instance. I know and understand hardship — though I’ve grown away from it — and had it easy. I can remember winter nights when a teddy-cake was a luxury.’

‘Am I right then, in imaginin’ you was the servant who took ’is fancy?’ Mr Pilcher had never looked so odiously vindictive.

‘I was never anybody’s servant. If Mr Roxburgh asked me to be his wife, it was — I believe — because he loved me. In a sense I am under obligation, but choose to serve someone I respect — and love,’ she added.

While they were engaged in what could have been an ‘imagined’ conversation in so far as it was related to her humble, and consequently, unreal past, the shadows had been enshrouding them. Now a moon was rising, like a single medal of the honesty her mother-in-law liked to arrange in vases, because it was so reliable and needed no further attention. Against a drained sky, the present moon might have passed for transparent to those who had not made a study of its face and learnt its peculiarities.

Thinking she had worsted her opponent, Mrs Roxburgh was preparing to break away. ‘My husband will be expecting me.’

But the mate’s eyes were glittering, like her own hands she realized, as they held the empty pannikin.

He pointed to her rings. ‘Will ye give me one?’

‘Why ever should you want it?’

‘As a memento!’ He laughed, apparently embarrassed.

‘Perhaps we’ll never wake! And if we do, will you want to remember this bad dream?’

‘I’m not one that can afford dreams, and might get meself out of some future hole if I have a little something to fall back on.’ As he spoke he fell to fingering the nest of garnets.

‘Take it!’ she said. ‘I no longer have any use for them. For that matter, I’ve never truthfully felt they were mine.’

She stretched out her hand, and he practically dragged the ring off, and fitted it on a little finger. Held to the light for him to look at, the garnets smouldered back at him.

‘Now you too, can be counted among the capitalists,’ she told him in making her escape.

She was glad of the accompaniment provided by her skirt, sweeping coral and brushing scrub, as she returned to the camp and a mouthful of rancid salt pork.