Patrick White - The Fringe of Leaves

He appeared at first resentful of her kindness, like some pampered child preparing to take revenge for neglect.

‘You know that my thoughts are always only for you, Mr Roxburgh,’ she added without consideration for the truthfulness of what she was saying.

Thus his servant hoped to reassure him.

But he sank his chin against her shoulder. ‘It is Spurgeon, Ellen. I think he must have died.’

For the moment only the Roxburghs were aware of what had happened; nor had the company noticed the tears shed by Mr Roxburgh for his recently acquired, unsavoury friend. Weakened morally as well as physically, he would not have attempted to conceal those tears, unless from his wife, and Ellen, he trusted, would mistake his grief for a natural process of crystallized moisture dissolving back into its original state of water.

Spurgeon the steward, already stiff, was pitched overboard by his crew-mates without benefit of canvas or lead. In this instance Captain Purdew did not read the burial service, perhaps because he did not realize anything had happened, or else he had mislaid Oswald Dignam’s book. Spurgeon, some of those present suspected, is the corpse the sharks get. But who cares, finally?

That Mr Roxburgh cared, nobody but his wife guessed, and she must steel herself that her husband might survive.

As one who had hungered all his life after friendships which eluded him, Austin Roxburgh did luxuriate on losing a solitary allegiance. It stimulated his actual hunger until now dormant, and he fell to thinking how the steward, had he not been such an unappetizing morsel, might have contributed appreciably to an exhausted larder. At once Mr Roxburgh’s self-disgust knew no bounds. He was glad that night had fallen and that everyone around him was sleeping. Yet his thoughts were only cut to a traditional pattern, as Captain Purdew must have recognized, who now came stepping between the heads of the sleepers, to bend and whisper, This is the body of Spurgeon which I have reserved for thee, take eat, and give thanks for a boil which was spiritual matter … Austin Roxburgh was not only ravenous for the living flesh, but found himself anxiously licking the corners of his mouth to prevent any overflow of precious blood.

Upon suddenly waking, Mr Roxburgh discovered his mouth wide open. He would have set about ejecting anything inside it, from his stomach too, had they not been equally empty. Emptiness, however, did not protect him from a fit of sweating shivers, which persisted after he had looked around him and seen that all, including Captain Purdew, were fast asleep.

So much for night and dreams. Glances exchanged by daylight promised worse, until in the course of the morning Mr Courtney stood up in the bows and drew attention to what first appeared a slate-pencil miraculously laid along the edge of the slate. Whether island or mainland, he personally was not prepared to speculate, but wind, sea, and general conditions being in the long-boat’s favour, he ventured to affirm that they would make landfall before many hours.

The Roxburghs avoided looking at each other. Instead she clasped his hand, the rather delicate, attenuated bones and the boss made by his signet ring.

All trace of cloud was gone from the sky as they approached the shore. Faces bleared by rain and suffering offered themselves instead to an onslaught by ceremonial sunlight, which was grinding an already dazzling stretch of sand into an ever-intensifying white. Some of the castaways would not have been surprised had the Almighty ordered His trumpets to sound their arrival on the fringe of paradise itself.

They advanced lumbering through the turquoise-to-nacre of a still sea, which shaded into a ruffle of surf, scarce enough to wet the ankles. The long-boat practically beached herself, in the silence and amazement of those aboard. One or two jumped, but more of them tumbled out, to crawl like maimed crabs through the shallows.

Not unnaturally the passengers were again forgotten. It was Mrs Roxburgh who offered her husband a helping hand to clear the gunwale, as though he had returned to playing the role of dedicated invalid.

‘Is it too much to hope, Ellen,’ he whispered through bleeding lips, ‘that we shall be left in peace awhile, to recover our strength — if not our normal, rational thoughts?’

‘I expect so,’ she murmured to comfort him.

The crew ahead of them were already either lying, elbows in the air, or cheek to the sand, while one soul more suspicious than the rest wandered in a circle, apparently attempting to sight the invisible insect, or malicious spirit, which was bound to start tormenting him.

Whether from extreme debility or devotion to duty, Captain Purdew was the last to leave the boat. Staggering ashore he fell on his knees where the sand still glistened with bubbles left by the retiring wave, and proceeded to give thanks to their Maker in what passed for an official voice, ‘Almighty Lord, I pray that we may prove ourselves worthy of this unexpected blessing … that we may be strengthened for the trials to come from having experienced your loving mercy …’ but went into a more private mumble, ‘and fill our empty bellies, Lord … and slake our unbearable thirst … not with pebbles, nor lead sinkers. My dear, it wasn’t me who would have abandoned Bristol Maid , if others hadn’t been in favour …’

At this point overcome by emotion, the old man fell on his face and united his bubbles with those of the receding tide.

As for Austin Roxburgh, he resolved to follow the captain’s example, and give thanks, but privately, to God (more private still to his more convincing ipse Pater ) at some later date. The present was not auspicious: he felt stunned by a silence of the earth as opposed to the thundering silence of the sea; his ears were left ticking and protesting.

Round them shimmered the light, the sand, and farther back, the darker, proprietary trees. Where the beach rose higher, to encroach on the forest, great mattresses of sand, far removed from the attentions of the tides, were quilted and buttoned down by vines, a variety of convolvulus, its furled trumpets of a pale mauve. Mrs Roxburgh might have thrown herself down on the vine-embroidered sand had it not burnt her so intensely, even through the soles of her dilapidated boots.

She was, besides, growing conscious of a smell, of more, an obscene stink, and saw that she was squelching her way towards the putrefying carcase of what she took to be a kangaroo.

‘Phoo!’ she cried; then her wits took over. ‘Can it be used, though? There’s plenty game that stinks as high on the best-kept tables.’

Hunger effected it quicker than it might have been. Mr Courtney succeeded in coaxing fire out of some dry twigs and vine with the help of flint and steel he had found in a shammy-leather bag strung round the late Spurgeon’s neck. Roasting somewhat quenched the stink of putrefying flesh, and in those who waited, greed quickened into ecstasy.

There was not one who failed to claim his portion. The meat tasted gamey, as Mrs Roxburgh had foreseen, and was singed-raw rather than cooked. But Mr Roxburgh declared he had never tasted a more palatable dish, ignoring the frizzled maggot or two he scraped off with a burnt finger, and sat there when he was finished, sucking at a piece of hide as though he could not bear to part with it.

One of the men added to their comfort by discovering during a short reconnaissance of the adjacent forest several pools of only slightly brackish water, to which the party trudged, and scooped water by the handful, or lay with their faces in it, sucking up injudicious draughts. Mrs Roxburgh contemplated bathing her face and hands, for the stench of rotten kangaroo had been added to the smell of salt grime accumulated over weeks spent in an open boat, but on glancing round at her companions she suspected that such behaviour might appear ostentatious, and in any case, it could produce only superfical results. Since her return to land she had become aware of whiffs given off by wet clothes and the body inside them.