Why would a woman need a husband

when she has a rifle?

From the secret diary of Mary Watson 10TH JUNE 1880.

A sharp in-breath as I wake, bile on my tongue. It's the same dream I've had every night since we arrived.

Somehow, I'm in Bob's head as he lands Isabella on the sandy tongue of the Lizard. It's been a long time since he's lived here. Under a full moon with its cataract of cloud, his boots chew dark gravel to the house. There's that island noise he finds so rea.s.suring: the corkscrew screek of panda.n.u.s leaves opening the ocean's bottle of wine.

The heavy door to the house breathes open and he slumps with relief, seeing how a fire has been lit and is making those satisfying cleaver-meets-marrowbone cracks. Nothing wrong. Nothing wrong ... except his pipe has been moved from where it usually sits on the mantel. Dark streaks of blood stain the wall, and a woman (is it me?) and her child look up from the light, their skulls aglow ...

Dawn light seeps through cracks in the limestone wall. A seabird's call in the distance. As always, that high-tide backwash of waves. Bob is asleep next to me; a series of whale breaches as he snorts through his nose, then dives again into the comparative silence of a mucousy gurgle, ready for the next surge.

Nothing wrong, I tell myself. n.o.body's died. It's just a dream. But if I am the woman, then who is the child? And why is there nothing left of either of us but skulls?

When my heart slows, I grab my robe in the half-dark, stumble out to the door, opening it on the new day's shivery air.

Ah Sam is boiling water for tea in the cookhouse. He looks up with a nod and a smile. Dry crinkles of heat rise from the pan he's heating for pancakes. A crisp, biscuit smell. I pull the robe tighter around me. It's a bit too early in the morning for philosophical conversation, but I still haven't quite shaken off the small hand of sleep.

'Missy?'

'Ah Sam. Do you believe that dreams can predict the future? I had a dream, set on this island at night. I think I was dead. There was a baby.'

He pales. 'You don't say that.'

Clearly time to change the subject. 'You think the men will go fishing today?'

He relaxes a little. 'Maybe. But maybe squall coming.'

I look over the flat-as-a-postage-stamp sea. The sunrise is only just reaching this side of the island. The water's still plush dark, though shot through with cracks of simmering grey. The horizon's a newly lit wick - its flames gain confidence, spread sideways over the ocean.

'It doesn't look like bad weather,' I say.

Ah Sam shifts his bare feet on the earthen floor. Picks up a rag to lift the kettle from the fire. His face is flushed with heat.

'Small cloud in sou-east, light wind from west.'

He hands me a pannikin full of tea and I blow on its surface to cool it. The brew smells of woodheaps and tannin. 'Well, you'd know more than I would.'

Ah Leung hobbles around the corner like a misty troll, barefoot apart from a filthy bandage, hoe in hand. Percy's right: I'll have to interact with him to a certain extent. But the exchanges won't work unless I let him know who's boss.

'Ah Leung. I'd like a cabbage for dinner. And are there any melons?'

He looks up briskly, his face a plaster cast. I know he's capable of relaxing. When I go to empty the vegetable peelings into the chicken coop after dinner, I hear him laughing as he talks to Ah Sam in their hut.

'Melon not very good.' He turns. 'Pineapple only.'

'Well, pineapple, then. I want onions too,' I tell his retreating back.

His shoulders lift then fall in resignation. I shuffle back to the house nursing my tea.

Bob comes, yawning, out of the open door. He lurches past me without looking up. I hear him exchange a few words with Ah Sam in the cookhouse. He emerges with tea. What's left of his hair sticks up, as though he's had a cartoonish fright. The light on the water has a reddish core, with orange corrugations. Sure enough, now the darkness has lifted somewhat, small clouds are visible in the southeast, just as Ah Sam predicted.

'Ah Sam says there might be a squall today. Will you go fishing?'

'Hmm.' He rubs his eyes, looks out over the ocean, then up to the sky: consulting the runes. 'Hard to say.' Sips his tea. 'Want to be rid of me, do ye?'

'No,' I say evenly. 'But surely you must go out fishing soon.'

He doesn't answer. Just scratches himself, then hawks a gob of spit onto the ground.

Carrie's awake. I can hear her moving around inside.

'What's for breakfast?' she calls out to no one in particular. 'I'm starving.'

'Get dressed,' Bob says to me. 'After we eat, I'll give ye that shooting lesson.'

There's nothing soft about beach sand when it's blowing in your face. I'm p.r.o.ne in the hard gra.s.s on the lowland, facing the sea. The bristles itch all along my torso. Bob stands next to me, giving instructions.

'Hold the b.u.t.t up against yer shoulder. Firm, mind.'

'Won't it hurt when I fire?'

'It might, if ye hold the stock away from yer shoulder and the recoil slams it back to bone ...' He leaves the sentence unfinished.

I pull the rifle more tightly against my shoulder.

'Now rest yer cheek on the b.u.t.t. Drop yer head down a wee bit so ye can line up the target through the backsight. Now what did I say? As distance increases, ye move yer right hand up the barrel. Just a whisper, mind. Or else lower yer shoulder. And when the target's beyond twenty paces away, aim above the point ye want to hit. All right?'

Sun streams off the water, a blinding foil of light striking the already-holed billy lid he's propped up on a broken crate on the beach. I line it up in the backsight. Fire. A sizeable pony kicks me in the shoulder. A puff of sand erupts in front of the target.

I wince and lay the gun down. 'I thought you said this would lessen the recoil!'

'If ye don't believe it's worse the other way, try it.'

He's irritated. Again. I can hear his medicinal b.a.l.l.s clinking away in his pocket.

'Well, what did I do wrong then? Why didn't I hit it?'

'Ye didn't aim above the target. It's more than twenty paces away.'

He's not right, I'm sure of it. Ten paces, fifteen at the outside. I grit my teeth and end up chewing sand.

'Well, I'll load another cartridge. Try again.'

'Yer sure yer poor wee shoulder can take it?'

'Quite sure,' I say with caustic calm.

I close my eyes against the flying sand. Then open them again. I talk myself slowly through the process, unwilling to ask him for help. I shut down the flap of the backsight. Grip the breechblock firmly. Draw it back as far as possible with a jerk, raise the muzzle of the rifle while I'm doing so. It takes me a good minute to get the old cartridge case out and put the new one in. Bob delights in pointing out how slow I am. How the blacks could have speared me a dozen times and held a corroboree by the time I'm done.

I put the b.u.t.t up to my sore shoulder. Line up the sight, move the barrel half an inch higher, and fire. I hear a satisfying tink and the billy lid skitters across the sand. It almost makes the extra pain worthwhile.

I'm not allowed to bask in the glory of my achievement. Bob's already got the revolver out.

'Now, with the revolver, ye must learn a whole different way for loading and unloading. It's only accurate when yer target is close - ten paces at most. The rifle's for when the blacks are halfway over from the swamp. The revolver's for when they're knocking on the door. Ye shouldn't have to kill. Just fire into the air and they'll run away. Let them know ye mean it.'

In another hour, the billy lid is more holes than metal. I've proved to Bob's satisfaction that I know enough to defend the homestead.

I've also rea.s.sured myself that if I have to defend myself against Ah Leung - or anyone else who threatens me or Carrie - then I can.

29.

A recipe for trouble:

Take two women, one small house,

an old grudge, and stir

with a wooden spoon.

From the secret diary of Mary Watson Ah Sam was right about the squall. Three o'clock and a stiff breeze blows that locked-up horse-stall smell of dried seaweed up from the beach. Bob's mending the wire racks in the smokehouse. Carrie's peeling potatoes, and I'm stringing beans from the garden for dinner. The wind's a sou-westerly and getting on our nerves, bashing the washhouse's spindly door against the frame.

The sound has slapped my ears for half an hour and I can bear it no longer. I plough my face, exposed wrists and ankles through the grinding air outside to hook the latch. I take one quick look at the ocean. Through the blown mist, the water's a series of galloping white manes. Bob's sea kelpies. I close the door against the weather, but still those cloven hoofs kick at the roof. Nostrils snort at the shutters. Rubber lips whinny at the shotgun hole in the door, calling me out to play.

Just above the washing-up bench, the shutters on the south wall shudder. I walk over and adjust the lever on the window frame enough to peek out. The leaves of the panda.n.u.s rustle like a nest of vipers. Even the small, horizontal bands of wind I've let in play havoc with my bun and I reluctantly close up the gaps again.

I hold bobby pins in my mouth, twist the hair behind me into a snail, then fasten it back in place at the nape of my neck. It's claustrophobic in the house. A closed box. No light. No fresh air. The conversation is similarly stifling.

Carrie's been niggling me ever since I came back from shooting practice this morning.

'Papa says I should take up a position as a governess in Maryborough where I can be nice and close to him and Mama.' Somehow I have to impress on her that she can't stay near Papa.

'Don't take a job in Maryborough. Apply for Brisbane, or anywhere he can't easily get his claws into you.'

'Papa said you'd try to turn me against him.'

I've suddenly no time for the gaps in her memory, the blind spots of her allegiance. Her supercilious ignorance. 'Go on, spit it out.' I slam the bowl of topped-and-tailed beans on the bench, throw the dishcloth on top of it.

'All right, I will.' She tips a bald potato head back into the water bucket. The brown tide splashes onto her dress. 'Papa said you made up stories to disgrace the family. Hideous, hateful, unforgivable lies.'

'Why would I do that, Carrie? Exactly what would I have to gain by lying?'

She looks at me coldly. Picks up another potato. Begins her useless, wasteful little chipping away at it. 'It's always gain with you, isn't it? But some things you can't get. Like beauty. Like love. You're not Papa's favourite any more, it's as simple as that. What you lack has driven you mad.'

I take off my ap.r.o.n carefully, hang it on a hook on the wall. 'Maybe I should have just left you there.'

I wrench the door open, afraid my head will explode with all the angry wasps vibrating away inside it.

'Where are you going? It's blowing a gale outside!'

I look back at her. Her blue dress disappears into the house's shadows. Only her teeth and eyes sparkle. Like a Cheshire cat.

'The mad always walk around in tempests, don't they?'

'Why exactly did you marry Bob?' she calls out after me. 'You don't love him. Are you going to break his heart the way you've broken Papa's?'

I don't have to bang the door shut. The wind does the job for me.

The air swirls like eggwhite in Chinese soup. Gulls beat uselessly with their wings, going nowhere. I move forward, mindless, battered and pushed, until I find myself at the edge of the mangrove swamp.

Inside, it's quieter. The gusts fade to a wet blanket flapping in the distance. My feet slog through puddles of stinking mud. It's an old, old smell. A graveyard of dead men's fingers poke up. The ground pocks and slithers with secretive crabs.

I can hear something under the sea, behind the deep cannon booms on the reef to the east. A low, atonal tune, held, then amplified. That same singing I heard on my first night on the Lizard. Almost certainly a trick of acoustics. But thinking so is one thing; my nerve's creep, quite another.

It's a relief to break free of the squelching mud, tread the bank of the stream, where the roots of the swamp oaks remind me of those whalebone hoops in petticoats, their curved arcs diving into the water.

Something moves on the far bank. A rustle in the tight-packed trees. I should have brought the gun. What's the use of knowing how to fire it if it's resting against the wall in the house?