Patrick White - The Fringe of Leaves

Meanwhile the mother, with renewed tact and kindness, had produced a jug of barley-water, and a dish of fruit ‘from our own garden’. If Mrs Roxburgh preferred to retire, a servant would bring a collation to her room. ‘Do not think, Mrs Roxburgh, that my husband, or anybody, expects of you anything you would not wish. We are so happy to see you alive.’

After which, Mrs Lovell sailed off in her swell of children.

‘You should know, my dear,’ Miss Scrimshaw reminded, ‘that you are something of a heroine, and must pay the price accordingly.’

‘I cannot claim to be what I am not.’

Miss Scrimshaw was too well-bred or too wise to persist.

Mrs Roxburgh was relieved that, thanks to crape, she had been able to hide her rising distraction until after the spinster had removed herself, when on raising the veil she saw that she had bitten into her lips, and that the blood was running. Soon after, she threw herself upon the bed, a bundle of falsehood and charitable clothes, to give way to what was partly guilt, and partly frustrated passion.

She resumed control of herself to admit the servant bearing the cold collation on a tray. She was ravenous, and fell to stuffing herself with ham and mutton alternately, until she got the hiccups. It was the all-too-fat meat, together with her own greed and sensuality.

When at last she slept, she dreamed of a transcendent love which in its bodily form walked just ahead and might ever elude her, at Putney or anywhere else in the actual world.

She awoke early, refreshed to the extent that she imagined herself on a visit to a friend: Mrs Daintry perhaps, in Gloucestershire? or could it be the visit, much discussed but never paid, to Mrs Aspinall at Hobart Town? She was relieved to dismiss the latter possibility by seeing where she really was.

She rose and, after exploring her room, decided she must wash herself at the wash-stand put there for that purpose. Soap crude by standards other than colonial made her laugh at least as she lathered herself happily. Yes, she was happy. She would have enjoyed dressing her hair in style had there been enough of it.

During the night somebody had removed her weeds and laid out in their place a muslin gown patterned with knots of pansies, or heart’s-ease she had heard them called. When she had put on the fresh petticoats she also found, and over them the pretty dress, and finished by tying its sash in cobalt silk, she saw that from being so long without them she had overlooked the stays, and was forced to repair the omission, and make herself seemly.

Already there were signs of life from other quarters: pots dragged across the surface of a kitchen range, the scent of wood-smoke rising, a man’s voice giving orders. She hoped she might avoid discovery, and actually did, even by children. She made her descent through the Commandant’s garden by natural slopes and artificial terraces, where shaddocks and lemons, bananas and guavas appeared on congenial terms with cabbage- and tea-trees and the stiff cut-outs of native palms. A palm-leaf cut her hand as the result of her looking to it for support.

On reaching the bottom-most terrace she arrived at a flight of stone steps leading down to the muddy river. A white egret stalking in the shallows rose and flapped into the distance. She heard what could have been the crow-minder’s rattle on the opposite shore. She looked about her, instinctively and furtively. At such an hour she might have succeeded in making her escape had it not been for the numerous innocent kindnesses she had experienced at Moreton Bay.

Instead she stood awhile enjoying the moist, palpitating air before returning voluntarily to the prison to which she had been sentenced, a lifer from birth.

Halfway up the slope she encountered a deputation consisting of Kate the eldest Lovell, a white-haired boy, and two younger tottery girls.

Kate informed her, ‘We’ve come to find you, Mrs Roxburgh, and bring you to breakfast.’ Her speech had the stiffness of formal composition, the others simpering in time with their sister, until at the end of it, everybody burst.

Mrs Roxburgh again received the impression that they visualized her as the naked survivor, who doubtless the moment before had finished defecating behind a clump of their father’s bamboos.

So she smoothed her dress before appealing to them, ‘You will breakfast with me, I hope, and give me courage to face the morning.’

It was too strange for them to contemplate for long.

One little girl announced very firmly, ‘We had our breakfast.’

‘We’ve got our lessons’, the boy told, ‘with Miss Scrim. If we don’t do them our father will whip us.’

Mrs Roxburgh heard herself, ‘It’s right, surely, to carry out the tasks you’ve been set, and to expect punishment if you don’t.’

Her too spontaneous moralizing might have depressed her had not the children offered hands and brought her up the last of the slope. They seemed to take sententiousness as much for granted as the surroundings in which they found themselves.

At the end of the morning, after the school-room had disgorged its rabble of relieved children, Miss Scrimshaw came to Mrs Roxburgh’s door. ‘I should have warned you,’ she said, ‘Captain Lovell is returning early from the Commissariat, and would like the opportunity of talking to you before we dine. He must write the report for His Excellency.’

‘I can hardly refuse him, can I?’ Mrs Roxburgh replied.

‘That is for you to decide.’ Miss Scrimshaw enjoyed the dependence of others but saw to it that they did not abuse the relationship.

‘How have you occupied yourself this morning?’ she asked with less acerbity.

‘I have sat and watched the light changing, and listened to the sounds of an unfamiliar house.’

‘In that way also, I expect one can learn something.’ Miss Scrimshaw laughed. ‘In any case I shall fetch you when the Commandant arrives.’

Without expressing active disapproval she left Mrs Roxburgh to her passive pursuits.

The prisoner had in fact experienced twinges of conscience for her own inactivity. She had been roused from lethargy at one stage by the feeling that somebody was about to pinch or even strike her for not having joined in the search for yams or the chopping of fern- roots. She knew, however, that it was more important to avoid ambush by those endowed with guile. For she heard on and off the footsteps, the voices, of morning callers. Mrs Lovell was entertaining the ladies of the garrison, all of them doubtless kind, and at the same time inquisitive.

And now the Commandant.

He received her standing in the centre of a room which might have impressed had she been more impressionable, and had she not suffered the same fate as the furniture, of covering great distances and ending up battered, scratched, dusty, though still with a hint of having enjoyed more pretentious circumstances. There was a smell of must from a worn, dust-impregnated carpet mingling with the scents of citrus and guava which strayed in from beyond the veranda. Bars of sunlight prevented her distinguishing the less aggressive, original design woven into the threadbare carpet, just as gilt grilles would have deterred her had she been inclined to investigate the rows of rigidly aligned books. But dear life, she had never been bookish unless to please others, and the Commandant would not have been pleased. He frowned, and closed his watch. The family dined at three, she had heard. He would have a good two hours in which to torture his victim if he chose.

At the beginning he was out to charm. ‘I trust you are rested, Mrs Roxburgh?’ He smiled at her from under sandy eyebrows, and manœuvred a heavy, claw-footed chair.

She thanked her adversary. The chair was so wide across its crackled seat that she now sat stranded in the middle of it, gripping for support at carving which she felt had been polished by hands sweating as nervously as hers.