Patrick White - The Fringe of Leaves

The watcher writhed to such an extent the flame leaped on the candle the screen was shielding, then subsided almost to extinction before recovering itself.

‘Jack?’

Sergeant Oakes cleared his throat. ‘’Tis not Jack. ’Tis nobody.’

‘Don’t tell me!’ She did not laugh; it must have been the sheet slithering.

When inspiration clapped the sergeant on the shoulder, and he lowered his voice into a whisper more determined than desperate. ‘’Tis not nobody, neether. ’Tis Mrs Oakes — your nurse.’

The patient seemed satisfied awhile, except she was for ever turning and fretting, and at last went into a lengthy, scarcely sensible rigmarole. ‘Poor Pa! I’d knaw your breathin’ anywheres. You always was more silence than words. You never knawed me like I knawed me father. Had time to, all they winters, all they sheep ’n teddy-hoen’. We should ’uv drove the few mile on to Tintagel, day we fetched th’ ’eifer to Borlase. So I never did see — Tintagel. It was Mr Austin Roxburgh who come. The gentlefolk! I was overlaid with pool de swa. I was plaised as puss for a season. Not the swans-down. That were black. An’ later. They nights were so cold we could ’ear our teeth chatterin’ to one another when we kissed. Poor Pa! I loved you too. If you knawed, you wouldn’ be skulkin’ behind th’ old screen.’

Forced to make water at this point, the watcher stole away, but when he returned to his post she was still at it, though less personal, so to say.

‘Gee op, Tiger! If you place. We’re not op the hill to Zennor.’

And again, ‘My ewes idn’t penned, and rain comin’ as big as cannon-balls by the looks. Shoo! For life’s sake, run!’

He shivered to feel it rushing past, the rain, the wool; there was one fleece had thorns in it.

‘Oh,’ she sighed, ‘you have not filled the scuttle, Mattie, or built me a fire which will warm my thoughts.’

His head was near to busting with confusion and sleep.

‘Oh, Mrs Daintry, do you fancy chocolate? Or will it make us liverish?’

She would not let him be.

‘Mrs Oakes, your husb’n … My hubsand, Mrs Oakes ‘had a mole …’

Dang me, what will she come at next!

‘Ellen can tell a token when she sees one. This one is blacker than any face I ever see’d. The whole world will perish by it. Shut the window, won’t you? Oh, please … Sergeant … fetch your … pist-tol …’

It was Emily leaning over him. He knew her by the scent of her hair. The candle had fizzled out in the socket leaving a smell of cold wax.

‘Did she pass the night peaceful?’

He could not tear himself quick enough out of the tormented leather. ‘I couldn’ say. She slept, I reckon. We both did. But it was a sort of madness, Emily.’

He made straight into the morning he knew, and was soon wiping his hands on the rather greasy rag he used when he rinsed the cows’ teats before milking.

Mrs Oakes sent messages to Moreton Bay by one or other of her three sons: Mrs Roxburgh showed every sign of regaining health and strength, though still in no condition to travel. In any event, Mrs Oakes would have been loth to discharge her patient: they had developed a fondness for each other. Mrs Oakes could not think how she would spend her days if the object of her cosseting were taken from her and herself left with the company of men preoccupied with beasts and weather. She would dearly have loved a girl-child, but since she had not been so fortunate, here was this ailing stranger, not without her childish ways.

They were happiest sipping mint tea while looking at mementoes of the Old Country. The yellowed letters and locks of wan hair infused the farmer’s wife with a delectable melancholy. ‘Sad, isn’t they?’ She smiled and at the same time wiped an eye.

‘Do you regret your life?’ Mrs Roxburgh asked.

‘No. Why should I? This is where I belong now. It’s different for a man, perhaps. A woman, as I see, is more like moss or lichen, that takes to some rock or tree as she takes to her husband. An’ that is where we belong.’

‘I have no husband — no children. I’m in every respect free.’

Mrs Oakes made haste to encourage her friend. ‘But that needn’t be the end of the matter!’

Their discourse might have taken an awkward turn had Tim not arrived at the very moment from the settlement with a parcel of clothes sent by Mrs Lovell: ‘to try like, for size.’

‘Why, they’s lovely! Isn’t they, Mrs Roxburgh?’ Mrs Oakes could not give over rummaging amongst the garments. ‘You ’ave to admit people is good.’

There was everything from stays to petticoats, and two dresses one in black Paramatta out of respect for widowhood, and one less sombre, in garnet silk.

‘Now I don’t want to go against your feelin’s, Mrs Roxburgh, but this is the one which will suit your style of beauty.’ Mrs Oakes held up the garnet silk. ‘It’s real lovely, won’t you admit?’

Mrs Roxburgh laughed low. ‘I don’t know about my “style of beauty”, or what will suit it, except to be clothed, I suppose, now that I am returning to the world.’

For the present, she made no special effort to return; the clothes she had been sent she accepted out of necessity rather than with enthusiasm. Since finding her feet, she preferred the old homespun shift provided by the farmer’s wife. Clothed in its shapeless drab, she slip-slopped into most corners of this honest house, and was frequently lost in contemplation of a pan of milk or batch of bread, or feeling her way as far as the yard, took stock of whatever it had to offer, a hen for instance, her brood stowed away amongst her feathers, the silly faces of the poddy lambs. Over all, the sun, which she no longer knew whether she should love as the source of life, or hate as the cause and witness of so much suffering and ugliness.

Her own ugliness, physical at least, had begun receding, so she learned by touch and from the images in a distorting mirror, the only looking glass the Oakes possessed. Its depths reflected fluctuating shapes in which she was at first reluctant, then grateful to admit that she detected traces, scarcely of beauty, but of what is known as ‘looks’.

On an evening when the light and sounds of life in house and yard were irresistibly benign, Mrs Roxburgh went so far as to drop the old woollen shift and stand fully revealed before the glass. She was at first too amazed to move, but then began to caress herself while uttering little, barely audible, cries of joy and sorrow, not for her own sinuous body, but for those whose embraces had been a shared and loving delight.

When Mrs Oakes came to call her patient to the evening meal she found Mrs Roxburgh standing dressed in the garnet silk.

‘There! You see? What did I tell you?’ The good woman blushed for her own perspicacity.

Mrs Roxburgh was indeed smouldering and glowing inside the panels of her dress, but at once grew agitated. ‘Leave me, please! It was foolishness on my part.’

‘But love, I doan’ un’erstand! Perfect is perfect, as I see it.’

‘I should not have done it. Please, go! I am not ready to be stared at.’

Mrs Oakes could only withdraw, and when Mrs Roxburgh finally appeared she was every bit the widow. The black gave her skin a yellow tinge, and her hair, which had grown long enough by now, she had screwed into an austere knob and fastened at the back of her head.

‘Isn’t it cold for the time of year?’ She had locked her hands together, and was carrying them, thus controlled, in front of her.

‘If anythin’, I’d say it’s steamy,’ Mrs Oakes replied absently.

The farmer and his three lads subdued their exchange of information out of respect for the widow’s dignity and feelings, as she sat amongst them on one of the same hard benches, tasting her soup, and frowning either for some thought of her own or an over-large lump of potato.