Patrick White - The Fringe of Leaves

‘More light, please, Mrs Oakes.’ It was evident that Lieutenant Cunningham was more at ease with older women and in giving orders to subordinates.

As Mrs Oakes pushed back a shutter the patient winced for the shaft of light which was aimed at her. She might have felt more exposed had she not realized that she must remain a mystery to them: her body, for which they were concerned, was the least part of her.

She lay passive, though one corner of her mouth twitched in the direction of a smile as the surgeon, assisted by Mrs Oakes, carried out his examination.

‘Ticklish, are we?’ The nurse laughed indulgently.

The doctor frowned. ‘Captain Lovell sends his compliments,’ Lieutenant Cunningham delivered the message with a formal earnestness not unmixed with personal goodwill, ‘and is looking forward to hearing your own account of your adventures as soon as your health is fully restored. I shall see to that,’ he assured her, knocking once or twice on her ribs to emphasize his authority, ‘and Mrs Oakes,’ he was polite enough to add. ‘We shall have you on your feet in no time, and bring you down to Moreton Bay.’

Mrs Roxburgh could not envisage it; she cowered. ‘My feet would not stand another journey. They are ruins.’

‘We shall send a carriage. Well, it’s not sprung ! But the best we can provide.’

‘Surely we might be attacked by blacks — or worse, escaped prisoners?’

The lieutenant was amused. ‘Don’t worry. You’ll have a military escort.’

Mrs Roxburgh’s distress was not relieved. ‘Shall I have to listen to the prisoners’ screams as they receive the lash?’

Now it was the surgeon’s turn to feel distressed; he had never dealt with a similar situation. ‘You’ll find the Commandant’s a humanitarian, unlike his predecessor, of whom I can see you must have heard.’

‘What became of the predecessor?’

The young man had broken out in a sweat; his golden whiskers could not disguise it. ‘He met with an accident.’

‘Was he murdered? Or simply killed?’

‘Better if you don’t inquire into painful matters which don’t concern you.’

A pulse had begun fluttering in her throat. ‘It does concern me — why the good and the bad are in the same boat — and the difference between killing and murder. Until we know, we shan’t have justice — only God’s mutton for Sunday dinner — those of us who are lucky enough.’

Seeing that she was beside herself, he turned away.

‘Do you play at cat’s-cradle?’ she asked.

Instead of answering, the surgeon produced a selection of medicaments out of a valise he must have unstrapped from his saddle, and after taking the nurse aside, gave his instructions in a low voice.

Then again, in the louder, jollier tones intended to reach the ears of the sick, ‘It’s chiefly a matter of rest, Mrs Oakes, and nourishment. Mrs Roxburgh is lucky in having a very remarkable constitution. She’ll live to a ripe old age, I’d say.’

But Mrs Roxburgh whimpered back, ‘What shall I do with a ripe old age? Without my husband?’

Mrs Oakes sucked her teeth, and clucked, ‘Dear Lord, how pitiful! But it’s only to be expected,’ and the amiable young surgeon joined in, ‘You’ll change your mind, you will see, Mrs Roxburgh. Mrs Lovell herself is organizing a wardrobe. All the ladies are contributing. It will be that much easier now that we know your size and shape.’ He checked himself, again embarrassed, but hurried on towards his departure. ‘You can rest assured, ma’am, of a warm welcome. We had heard of the wreck of Bristol Maid and were shocked to think of what we imagined the loss of everybody else on board.’

‘How did you hear?’ Mrs Roxburgh asked.

In the end, she could not trust (oh, she should have known!) this hitherto amiable, but too glossy, too fulsome young man.

‘We heard from the only known survivor. Of course there may be others still to be discovered, as you have been. I hope there are.’

She looked at him out of eyes which he afterwards failed to describe for the Commandant. ‘All dead. Some of them probably eaten. Only the condemned survive.’

At that the surgeon took his leave, but heard the voice muffled by the door which Mrs Oakes had closed behind them. ‘I ask nothing for myself. Only a pardon for my poor husband. I am the one who has committed the crime. I think he could not believe in me. For that reason, he ran back.’

It was something at least that stout Mrs Oakes was shaking the house in conducting him away from the sick-room, but the voice of darkness continued faintly pursuing the surgeon. ‘Even if Jack is not — destroyed — if he simply lies down and dies — I must give myself up as his murderess.’

That evening the nurse felt so ravaged and exhausted after her duty the night before, as well as the necessary attentions she had lavished on the patient during the day now past, she said to her husband when she had fed him, together with their three voracious sons, ‘I’d take it kindly, Ted, if you’d sit up with Mrs Roxburgh tonight. I do believe I’m at the end of me tether — temporary like,’ she hastened to assure him.

Ted Oakes, a large man, looked so alarmed his wife might have felt justified in congratulating herself had she been harbouring a grudge against him.

But Mrs Oakes was without malice even when he muttered, ‘I dursn’t, Emily. What would I do if she wet ’erself?’

‘You probberly wouldn’t know,’ she answered, ‘or if she was to tell you, well you’d only have to rouse me i’ the room beyond.’

Ted Oakes continued heaving and shaking his enormous form to signify his unwillingness. ‘And’, he said, ‘if she was to start quizzin’ me? I never ’ad no practice at conversin’ with a lady.’

‘Between ourselves, the poor soul may not be all that of a lady.’

Mrs Oakes did not elaborate, but after she had washed the dishes, and scoured the pan, and he had smoked his second pipe, and she had dosed the patient, and doused the candles, excepting one which she hid behind a little, hitherto useless screen embroidered by Emily herself during a slow courtship, she manœuvred her victim in the direction of the leather-and-horsehair throne. ‘There!’ she did not actually command. ‘’Tis no more than the edge of the battlefield, beside the doorway, hid behind this blessed screen, and call out to me if need be. She, poor thing, wouldn’ notice if Jemmy was in your place, she’s too heavy with the laudanum prescribed by Mr Cunningham.’

Without waiting for outright refusal Mrs Oakes left her husband to it.

It was an occurrence more alarming than any in Sergeant Oakes’s experience, worse even than mutiny at the prisoners’ barracks, or when some bolter or other ambushed the captain and they brought his body down from the mountain, the head all bloody where the eyes had been, the cock and ballocks cut off of him. Yet now it was but a still night, in which his son’s snores in the adjoining room competed with the stranger’s breathing the other side of the flimsy screen.

Were she to wake! Sergeant Oakes was running cold between his flannel and his skin. But might have dozed.

He was roused by a wind which had risen, and which was rustling round the eaves and under any shingles which happened to be loose; or no, it was this woman’s voice.

‘Is it you, Mr Roxburgh — Austin?’

The sergeant was too terrified to answer.

‘Then I know it isn’t. Mr Roxburgh had nothing against me. Or has he?’ she sighed. ‘It is hard to tell what human beings may have done to one another.’

The watcher’s flesh would have prickled without benefit of the horsehair with which his chair was stuffed.

‘I know who it is,’ the woman assured him. ‘It’s Jack. There’s no need to be afraid. Give me your hand at least, my darling. I’ll show you. I’ll put it where it will warm quickest.’