Patrick White - The Fringe of Leaves

She was seated in the shade of a tree, dressed in this same widow’s black, brushing biscuit-crumbs from her front, and finishing the last of a glassful of lime cordial, when Lieutenant Cunningham surprised her. The tree of shiny, dark, all but black foliage and spreading habit, was native by appearance, hence belonging to the catalogue of items the surgeon felt bound to dismiss out of loyalty to his origins, yet the rudiments of æsthetic instinct made him pause, if not to enjoy, to wonder at this picture of black competing with black. What made it oddly satisfying was perhaps the air of tranquillity emanating from tree and woman and the light which spangled both.

The patient looked startled on becoming aware of her doctor’s presence, as though realizing that a precious convalescence was ended and that the intruder had come only to sentence her to life.

‘I was not expecting you,’ she said (when in truth she had been expecting him daily) and put up a hand to add to the protection already afforded by the shady tree. ‘… so long since your last visit I took it for granted you had no intention of renewing our relationship.’

The tone of voice was flat and practical enough to contain no trace of grievance or of coquetry.

‘Precisely,’ the young man replied. ‘Since you are fully recovered, there has been no need for my services.’

She moistened her rather thin lips.

‘I’ve come today’, he continued, ‘simply to convey the Commandant’s regards and tell you what he is arranging for you.’

‘I wonder whether I am prepared.’ She averted her face behind the no longer protective hand, which was held so stiff he could not help but notice how it trembled.

‘Then you must prepare yourself,’ he advised as gently as his youth and inexperience conceded.

She looked beyond him to a landscape already blurred by heat for a reassurance she did not expect would be forthcoming.

‘You would not understand the wrench of parting from my friends the Oakes.’ She knew as she spoke that she was offering an untenable excuse.

‘But you can’t impose on them for ever!’ It had not been his purpose to sound so brutal.

That she must agree was obvious; to remain silent would suggest a lapse into childishness, but silent she remained.

It encouraged Lieutenant Cunningham to deliver the message entrusted to him and be done with responsibility. ‘Mrs Lovell, I assure you, will see that you want for nothing during your stay at the settlement.’

‘I don’t believe I can bear to face the prisoners.’ Mrs Roxburgh was almost choking on her words.

‘As the Commandant’s guest you will hardly need to.’ Out of necessity and his own embarrassment the lieutenant might have lied.

But it had become increasingly his aim to carry out instructions and escape without delay from this deluded widow and her possibly contagious obsessions; his experience hitherto was of placid wives and fizzing girls.

‘On Friday next the Commandant will send a conveyance (I’ve warned you, ma’am, not to expect a sprung carriage) with military escort as promised, and a lady to keep you company.’

So it would take place, Mrs Roxburgh saw. ‘I shall do my best to behave as I am expected to.’

The young lieutenant thought it strange, but only momentarily; it was no longer his affair.

He hurried on. ‘I should have thought, Mrs Roxburgh, you would welcome all these plans for your comfort.’ The surgeon had spurred himself into an excess of cheerfulness. ‘I must also tell you that His Excellency the Governor is looking forward to making your acquaintance and hearing your own account of your adventures when you reach Sydney.’

‘His Excellency? At Sydney!’ Mrs Roxburgh’s ineffectual hand fell to her lap; she might not have felt capable of facing this ultimate in trials.

‘I understand the Government revenue cutter’, the lieutenant concluded, ‘will be sent for you as soon as it completes another mission.’ It was some consolation to him to be sailing under official colours, for he was again troubled by this woman’s eyes.

‘I must try,’ she uttered, low and dry. ‘Yes, you are right. If only on account of my petition. I must not forget I am responsible to someone — to all those who have been rejected.’

Lieutenant Cunningham’s sang-froid was only restored as he urged his horse along the homeward track regardless of branches whipping and tearing. On rubbing his cheek he realized it must be bleeding from a cut. He laughed with relief and exhilaration, and thrashed his horse to further effort with a switch stripped fom a bush in passing.

On Friday next the farmer’s wife roused her friend earlier than necessary. So little of what is portentous occurred in Mrs Oakes’s life that an event in any way out of the common became something of an emotional disruption. The men would not have admitted to it, but made themselves scarce at daybreak in order to avoid farewells. Sergeant Oakes would never wholly forgive Mrs Roxburgh for the night he had kept watch by her sickbed. As for the sons, language did not convey, except when they grunted, private like, at one another. Still, they would remember her as a phenomenon which had appeared after lambing, in between sowing and reaping, before courtship and marriage. She would remain their glimpse of a never quite ponderable mystery, something more than a woman who had crawled naked out of the scrub into their regular, real lives: Mrs Roxburgh of Bristol Maid , the myth their children, sniggering and incredulous, would finally dismiss for being too familiar, yet incomplete.

‘There you are, Mrs Roxburgh, dear,’ Mrs Oakes announced on the Friday morning, ‘I have put up your things.’

They had been made into a clumsy parcel, not that they were her belongings any more than anything ever had been.

The two women sat together awhile on the veranda. They were so attached to each other, and trusting, it was natural that they should hold hands, Mrs Oakes’s dry, spongy palm, and Mrs Roxburgh’s, which fate had worked upon to the extent that the original plan was long since lost and the future become indecipherable.

It did not occur to the farmer’s wife to speculate over any of this; to her the hand was simply precious; so she squeezed it, and in some degree to avoid the unavoidable, confided, ‘I do declare I forgot to boil up the chickens’ mash.’

‘Then let us go together’, suggested Mrs Roxburgh, equally unpurposed, ‘to do what you forgot.’

But they remained sitting. The morning had become too drowsy. For two pins, this daughter would have laid her head upon the mother’s bosomy apron, drawn by its smell of laundering and flour. Mamma had never smelt thus, but of lavender water and violet cachous, and the chalk she continued puffing into the fingers of gloves she did not use after leaving Lady Ottering’s service.

Such fragile excuses and delicately scented delusions could hardly hope to survive: the women were startled out of their thoughts by the sudden jingle and champing of metal, grinding of wheels, and soon after, piecemeal voices.

Mrs Oakes grew raucous. ‘’Tis the carriage, Ellen!’ as though it could have been other than what they both feared.

The good woman pounded at such a bat towards the yard the veranda threatened to become disjointed.

Mrs Roxburgh sat forward, hunched against whatever was prepared for her. For the moment this was wrapped in silence and the stench of leather and horses’ sweat. Mrs Oakes seemed to have withdrawn from her life; there was nobody to offer guidance to one whom Mrs Roxburgh herself had long accepted as a lost soul.

Somebody was at last approaching, by way of a frail bridge it sounded, suspended over the chasm of silence. The footsteps were not those of her friend. Truly Mrs Oakes had been persuaded to abandon her. Mrs Roxburgh folded her hands in her lap, in one of those attitudes she had learnt and then forgot. If she could but remember her lessons, together with some of the more helpful tags of common prayer.