The Means of Escape. Penelope Fitzgerald

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СКАЧАТЬ arrival in Hobart she had been sent to the Female Factory, and later, after a year’s steady conduct, to the Hiring Depot where employers could select a pass-holder. That was how, several years ago, she had fetched up at the Rectory. Alice had taught her to write and read, and had given her (as employers were required to do in any case) a copy of the Bible. She handed over the book with a kiss. On the flyleaf she had copied out a verse from Hosea – ‘Say to your sister, Ruhaman, you have obtained mercy.’

      Mrs Watson had no documents which indicated her age, and her pale face was not so much seamed or lined as knocked, apparently, out of the true by a random blow which might have been time or chance. Perhaps she had always looked like that. Although she said nothing by way of thanks at the time, it was evident, as the months went by, that she had transferred the weight of unexpended affection which is one of a woman’s greatest inconveniences on to Miss Alice. This was clear partly from the way she occasionally caught hold of Alice’s hand and held it for a while, and from her imitation, sometimes unconsciously grotesque, of Alice’s rapid walk and her way of doing things about the house.

      

      Aggie had the tea, the bacon, the plum jam, and, on her own initiative, had added a roll of tobacco. This was the only item from the bond store and perhaps should have been left alone, but neither of the girls had ever met or heard of a man who didn’t smoke or chew tobacco if he had the opportunity. They knew that on Norfolk Island and at Port Arthur the convicts sometimes killed for tobacco.

      They had a note of the exact cash value of what was taken. Alice would repay the amount to Shuckburgh’s Hotel from the money she earned from giving music lessons. (She had always refused to take a fee for playing the seraphine at St George’s.) But what of truth’s claim, what of honesty’s? Well, Alice would leave, say, a hundred and twenty days for Constancy to reach Portsmouth. Then she would go to her father.

      ‘What will you say to him?’ Aggie asked.

      ‘I shall tell him that I have stolen and lied, and caused my friend to steal and lie.’

      ‘Yes, but that was all in the name of the corporeal mercies. You felt pity for this man, who had been a prisoner, and was alone in the wide world.’

      ‘I am not sure that what I feel is pity.’

      Certainly the two of them must have been seen through the shining front windows of the new terraced houses on their way up to the church. Certainly they were seen with their handcart, but this was associated with parish magazines and requests for a subscription to something or other, so that at the sight of it the watchers left their windows. At the top of the rise Aggie, who was longing to have a look at Alice’s lag, said, ‘I’ll not come in with you.’

      ‘But, Aggie, you’ve done so much, and you’ll want to see his face.’

      ‘I do want to see his face, but I’m keeping myself in check. That’s what forms the character, keeping yourself in check at times.’

      ‘Your character is formed already, Aggie.’

      ‘Sakes, Alice, do you want me to come in with you?’

      ‘No.’

      ‘Mr Savage,’ she called out decisively.

      ‘I am just behind you.’

      Without turning round, she counted out the packages in their stout wrapping of whitish paper. He did not take them, not even the tobacco, but said, ‘I have been watching you and the other young lady from the tower.’

      ‘This situation can’t continue,’ said Alice. ‘There is the regular Moonah Men’s prayer meeting on Friday.’

      ‘I shall make a run for it tomorrow night,’ said Savage, ‘but I need women’s clothing. I am not of heavy build. The flesh came off me at Port Arthur, one way and another. Can you furnish me?’

      ‘I must not bring women’s clothes to the church,’ said Alice. ‘St Paul forbids it.’ But she had often felt that she was losing patience with St Paul.

      ‘If he won’t let you come to me, I must come to you,’ said Savage.

      ‘You mean to my father’s house?’

      ‘Tell me the way exactly, Miss Alice, and which your room is. As soon as the time’s right, I will knock twice on your window.’

      ‘You will not knock on it once!’ said Alice. ‘I don’t sleep on the ground floor.’

      ‘Does your room face the sea?’

      ‘No, I don’t care to look at the sea. My window looks on to the Derwent, up the river valley to the north-west.’

      Now that she was looking at him he put his two thumbs and forefingers together in a sign which she had understood and indeed used herself ever since she was a child. It meant I give you my whole heart.

      ‘I should have thought you might have wanted to know what I was going to do when I reached England,’ he said.

      ‘I do know. You’ll be found out, taken up and committed to Pentonville as an escaped felon.’

      ‘Only give me time, Miss Alice, and I will send for you.’

      In defiance of any misfortune that might come to him, he would send her the needful money for her fare and his address, once he had a home for her, in England.

      ‘Wait and trust, give me time, and I will send for you.’

      

      In low-built, shipshape Battery Point the Rectory was unusual in being three storeys high, but it had been smartly designed with ironwork Trafalgar balconies, and the garden had been planted with English roses as well as daisy bushes and silver wattle. It was the Rector’s kind-heartedness which had made it take on the appearance of a human warren. Alice’s small room, as she had told Savage, looked out on to the river. Next to her, on that side of the house, was the visiting preacher’s room, always called, as in the story of Elijah, the prophet’s chamber. The Lukes faced the sea, and the Rector had retreated to what had once been his study. Mrs Watson slept at the back, over the wash-house, which projected from the kitchen. Above were the box-rooms, all inhabited by a changing population of no-hopers, thrown out of work by the depression of the 1840s. These people did not eat at the Rectory – they went to the Colonial Families’ Charitable on Knopwood Street – but their washing and their poultry had given the grass plot the air of a seedy encampment, ready to surrender at the first emergency.

      Alice did not undress the following night, but lay down in her white blouse and waist. One of her four shawls and one of her three skirts lay folded over the back of the sewing chair. At first she lay there and smiled, then almost laughed out loud at the notion of Savage, like a mummer in a Christmas pantomime, struggling down the Battery steps and on to the wharves under the starlight in her nankeen petticoat. Then she ceased smiling, partly because she felt the unkindness of it, partly because of her perplexity as to why he needed to make this very last part of his run in skirts. Did he have in mind to set sail as a woman?

      She let her thoughts run free. She knew perfectly well that Savage, after years of enforced solitude, during which he had been afforded no prospect of a woman’s love, was unlikely to be coming to her room just for a bundle of clothes. If he wanted to get into bed with her, what then, ought she to raise the house? She imagined calling СКАЧАТЬ