Patrick White - The Fringe of Leaves

If the Commandant was not exactly nervous he appeared more hesitant than one would have expected in a man of his authority. ‘As you must understand, I have my report to write for the Governor, on the circumstances of the wreck, your survival, and recovery. So,’ he sighed, digging an elbow into his desk, ‘I’d be glad to hear your account, if it will not open wounds which have healed. I would like to think that this can be —achieved without causing you unnecessary distress.’ He was looking somewhat congested for the effort, and although he had renewed his smile, it was directed at the blank sheet of paper before him.

‘Nobody — nothing — could distress me — not by now, Captain Lovell.’ If her claim was brazen, at least she would not look in his direction; it was the line of his cheek, his rather coarse wrists, which might open old wounds.

‘Then’, he said, ‘tell me in your own words what happened.’ She could scarcely accuse him of not being liberal.

‘Well,’ she considered, lowering her head, tasting her underlip with her tongue, ‘we were shipwrecked as you know — as you have heard from this other survivor.’ She felt herself perspiring intolerably. ‘What can I tell you,’ she gasped, ‘if you already know?’ It was not an argument to satisfy a man.

She must not look at the Commandant, but reserve her eyes as weapons in some passage at arms which called for greater subtlety. Instead she sat staring at her own hands held at the level of the cobalt sash, amongst the heart’s-ease, as though she had the stomach-ache, and no matter if he thought her feeble-minded.

The Commandant was contained by patience. ‘It’s by hearing different versions of the same incident that we arrive at the truth, Mrs Roxburgh, in any court.’

‘Oh,’ she cried, ‘I was never in court. Perhaps that’s why I was never sure whether I’d arrived at the truth — whatever the incident, Captain Lovell. For all that, I survived.’

She would have liked to glance at him, but thought that she might not have the strength.

She continued, while hanging her head. ‘My husband was killed. Yes, that is truth — a wound which perhaps will never heal. The blood gushing as I pulled the spear from his throat! I shall always remember the glare, the flies.’

The Commandant was making judicious notes.

‘Then the blacks marched the crew away.’ She wet her lips; she could not resist asking what hitherto she had not wished to know, ‘I wonder who is your other survivor?’

But the Commandant was conducting the court martial of a woman, one as disturbing as she was disturbed. ‘The blacks — did they treat you kindly?’ He spoke with what amounted to delicacy in anyone so exalted, and at the same time, coarse-boned.

She must not look at him, as she had decided in the beginning.

‘Well,’ she began afresh, but paused, ‘they were not unkindly — considering they had been fired on. Oh yes, poor Mr Courtney opened fire — the first mate. Several members of the tribe were killed. So they killed Captain Purdew — and Mr Roxburgh — in retaliation. No,’ she added, ‘I would say they treated me — reasonably — well. Of course they beat and pinched, and held fire-sticks under me, to frighten me into climbing trees for ’possums and maggoty old honey. There was also a disgusting child they wanted me to suckle, but I could not. I was dried off. I could not have fed the one I lost at sea.’

It was the Commandant who was disgusted; she could sense that.

‘Oh, I don’t blame the blacks! The child died. It would have done, even had it not been disgusting. So I was not to blame, neither. Now was I?’

He kept a silence through which she heard the action of his quill.

‘No one is to blame, and everybody, for whatever happens.’ Further than that she could not lumber.

‘What else?’

They had arrived at the tortuous part of the journey.

‘Oh,’ she raised her head, her throat, in which the veins would be standing out she suspected; she drew in her nostrils until they must be looking all gristle, ‘the black children! The children were not as spiteful as they had been taught by their elders. We would play at purru purru … ’

‘ Purru purru? ’ Captain Lovell sounded his gravest, his most official.

‘Ball,’ she answered. ‘We used to skip, too. I sang to them.’

‘What did you sing?’ It was as though he were determined to commit an indecency.

She could not remember, so she resolved to forgive him. ‘Some nonsense or other.’ (Not Go, deceiver, go! that was later, surely? and to someone else.) ‘It was while we were crossing to the mainland, and the children were frightened by the rough sea. Yes,’ she decided, ‘it must have been then.’

‘And when you arrived?’

By now it was the middle of the day. The Commandant was sweating; it trickled down over the neck of his tunic, which he was too correct to unhook. Mrs Roxburgh’s muslin was damp; the cobalt sash showed a high-water mark.

‘Well, you see, Captain Lovell,’ she hastened to appease him while it was still easy, ‘it was the gathering of the tribes — for corroboree.’

‘Did you take part in their corroboree?’

‘As much as a woman is expected to. It is the men who perform. The women only accompany them, by chanting, and by slapping on their thighs. Oh yes, I joined in, because I was one of them.’

‘Did you understand what you were supposed to be singing?’

‘Of course not. I was not with the tribe long enough to pick up more than a few words in common use. But surely it is possible to understand what words are about without understanding the words themselves?’

The Commandant more than likely did not understand, but was writing. Mrs Roxburgh suspected that what she understood had little to do with words, in spite of tuition from Mr Roxburgh and his mother. So it would be throughout her life.

‘There was one morning,’ she remembered, ‘very early, when I came across some of the members of my tribe, in a forest clearing. I never understood so deeply, I believe, as then.’

‘What were the blacks doing?’

‘It was a secret ceremony. They were angry with me and hurried me away.’

‘Because you saw what they were at?’

‘It was too private. For me too, I realized later. A kind of communion.’

‘If it made such an impression on you, I should have thought you’d be able to describe it.’

‘Oh, no!’ She lowered the eyes she had raised for an instant in exaltation.

The Commandant threw down his quill, and sat back so abruptly the chair and his heels grated on the threadbare carpet.

‘To return to our more factual narrative, it was at the corroboree, was it not? that you first saw the escaped convict who, according to my informants, rescued you.’

‘Yes,’ she said, and added, ‘I am sorry that friends I hold dear should have informed against me.’

The Commandant could not suppress his irritation. ‘Isn’t it natural for human beings to exchange information on matters of importance?’

‘Yes, and I am unreasonable, I know. Mr Roxburgh often suggested that.’ She smiled at her hands as they tightened on each other against the sash.

‘This man — the convict,’ Captain Lovell suggested, ‘would have told you his name — or a name — I don’t doubt.’

‘Yes. Chance. Jack Chance.’ She pronounced it softly because she could not remember ever having spoken it before in its entirety.

The Commandant echoed it, little above a whisper. His quill engraved, then embellished it, but in the margin, because he might not have accepted the name.

‘Don’t you believe in him?’ she asked sharply.

‘There was a man called Chance who bolted, but before my time. I have it in my predecessor’s record.’