The Book of Secrets (30 page)

What
would
they
say,
if
I
told
them
that
I
wore
my
children’s
teeth
strung
around
my
neck?

She counted the teeth and in all there were fifty-six, three complete sets of milk teeth less four.

Her eyes widened. In her hands, as if they were flesh, so alive had they become, were the teeth of Duncan Cave who had died before she was born, of Annie her mother who was now dead, and of Uncle Hector.

She held the beads in her hand a moment longer, then carefully placed them around her neck and covered them over with the collar of her dress.

T
hroughout the winter
Maria made fires, collecting wood from the paddock around the house. The boundaries were clear and she no longer sought to cross them. At first she had thought of staying inside so that she would not have to touch the soil that her uncle now claimed was his, but that seemed self-defeating. She needed warmth and food if she and her child were to survive. The real battles must wait until after the baby was born.

She put her arms around her belly then. I am holding you now, she told the baby. Whatever her uncle might have accomplished over the land, she thought he might have more difficulty convincing the law that they should take her child from her, even if it was considered the proper thing to do.

Often Maria returned to the journals of Isabella. It worried her that Isabella had survived for so long in the cave only to succumb to McLeod in the end. She kept likening her own situation to that of her grandmother’s, in spite of the clear differences between them. Isabella had chosen to leave her community but McLeod had coaxed her to return to it. His reward for her compliance had been to ordain the course of her life. And it seemed to Maria that it was McLeod who breathed on her, too, ordering her days and the progression of her life.

In the mornings she baked bread, as her mother had done, although she could never eat a half of what she made and took to feeding the birds with the crumbs on the rough lawn outside. Seven wax-eyes and four fantails came early each morning before the arrival of the blackbirds and thrushes, busy and outrageous in their behaviour.

At lunchtime she cooked meat that was left for her twice a week by darkness at the gate. As winter had come and the flies had vanished during the cooler weather, it usually stayed fresh, though sometimes when it was delivered it smelt as if it had been hung overlong. One night a brace of pigeons was waiting for her; she had a curious conviction that they had been left by a different person from the one
responsible for the other provisions. She plucked the birds with care and stuck the brightest feathers around the edge of the mirror. There, baby, she said aloud, those are for you, feathers and finery you’ll have, my pretty girl.

Girl. Yes, it will be a girl, she decided as she prepared a sweet pigeon pie. I wouldn’t know what to do with a boy. All my life I have lived in the presence of women, and my dealings with men have come to difficult ends. I have little faith in men. She shook her head. That is unfair. You haven’t really given them a chance, Maria. Oh but have they given you a chance? Well, I can’t altogether blame Branco, I gave him plenty of chances. Pshaw, Maria, it wasn’t a man you were after, it was an escape. Well, he didn’t help much, did he, look at you now.

Ah, but you did, Branco, for look what we made. Now there is you. And again she would touch her stomach and under her hand a fist or a foot would bulge against its walls.

Whoever prepared her provisions appeared to think carefully of her requirements. On another day there was a parcel of soft white wool. She sat down straight away and began to knit, her hands busy again, plying the soft yarn as she made garments like cobwebs for the baby. The next time there was a towelling cloth to sew into napkin squares and a note which read, ‘The baby will be going south, it will need to be dressed warmly when it leaves.’

By the fire that night she put down her knitting. ‘I do not want this baby to be born,’ she said aloud. ‘There is no way I can keep it to myself except that it stays inside of me.’

Later she lay in the dark and placed her hand on the fluttering birdlike creature within her, counting its heartbeat. Wind blew through the cracks in the bedroom wall. The bright summers of the past, and the billowing fires, had dried the timbers in the house and all winter it creaked and crackled, talking to her. We are a good trio, she thought, the house, the child, and me.

She was glad now, that for the time being she was there.

Winter ran on that year, frostier than usual in a climate where children were in the habit of running barefoot summer and winter. She could see them passing along the track that led past her gate, and from where she stood they looked pinched and buttoned up more tightly this year.

None of the children looked in her direction. Often she saw ones
she knew, the younger brothers and sisters of her friends, and once or twice she called out to them, but after the first time or two she knew better. They looked straight ahead and pretended they had not heard her.

One night seed potato was left by the gate. ‘It is early to sow,’ read the note left with them, ‘but when the frosts are over you should turn the ground and plant these.’

So they expect me to be here for the summer, eh? To lay in provisions for the next year? She turned the note over inside the house, for she never showed any sign of interest where they could see her in what they left.

‘When is your time?’ said the next note.

She smiled to herself with pleasure. There was something they did not know about her, after all. She, too, would like to know. Though she had an idea now. She had cleaned the house for a fortnight. It should be spotless when the midwife comes, she told herself as she turned out cupboards.

She sat back on her heels then, almost toppling with the effort, and wondered why the midwife might look in the bottom drawer of her mother’s chest where her old clothes were stored.

She sat on the floor then and wept. In the drawer were the clothes she remembered, a navy dress in fine wool, worn at the elbows, white collars which had become yellowed with age, a mob calico hat which her mother wore on wash days, and a shawl which came as near to being ornamental as anything her mother had ever worn, made of dark green handwoven cloth which she pinned in front with a large cairngorm. The brooch still lay in the top drawer of her mother’s chest. So much that was familiar, so little that was memorable. She had been her mother’s work of art, her ornament, and she had failed her and destroyed her. Or so they were saying, and she supposed that in a sense it must be true. She could remember the last days when she and her mother lived together, how Annie was often short of breath and her colour bad. Why hadn’t she noticed? Her mother must have been ill for a long time, all that summer when she was unable to find Maria on dusky evenings.

The drawer stuck as she tried to push it shut, jamming against a hard object at the far corner. She slid her hand inside and running it along the edge came to a book. Another of Isabella’s journals.

For a long time Maria sat looking at it.

‘I am not ready for it yet,’ she said aloud. The past already felt as if it was cramming her head from all sides. ‘Enough is enough. When I can bear more, I will read it.’

It was difficult to sleep at nights. There was no way she could arrange herself comfortably in bed. Three nights in a row she walked up and down. In the morning she would forget to light the fire, and the sight of food repelled her. Half-frozen, she would scrape out the ashes and set some kindling. When the fire was alight she put on a log big enough to burn all day and sat there until it was ashes, then shivering, made her way to bed. Within an hour the walking and pacing would begin again. Pain spiked the small of her back. Her legs felt like jelly. Weals stood out across her stomach. She half expected to see the skin begin to break as the child emerged but it only stretched more tight and hard. On the third morning after the marks appeared she took a handful of butter and smeared it on her stomach, rubbing it in to soften the skin which looked as if it would surely split that day. This gave her relief straight away, but when she sat by the fire the butter soaked through her clothes and she could smell herself then, rancid and sour. Her hair felt clammy as if she had been sweating and hung in lank matted knots around her face.

‘Please come out, please,’ she said to the child.

Immediately she regretted her comment, fearing that the child had heard her and might obey and they would be parted. ‘But at least I’ll see you,’ she commented, relenting. ‘And I will take care of you. I will. And you can love whom you will, lass. Eh, will you be a girl? Will you have fair yellow down on your head like a young chick … oh that’s my own mother’s voice for you … or will you have a black crown, like — him? Like my mother herself? Or my father perhaps? Now there’s a thought for you. That, the greatest absence in this house. Perhaps it’s as well. Or would it have made a difference? Strange how little I think of him, your father. That is my injustice. And Annie’s. He had a right to be heard.

‘Yet I can hardly recall his name or where he came from. Francis McClure of Prince Edward Island. Well, it’s neither here nor there. It is nothing … Except a half of me, and who I am. Fancy, I had not thought of that. Was he a wildcat, a joker in the pack? I’ve heard he was a quiet enough man. Were there things they did not tell me? Ha, was it easier to blame it all on poor old Isabella?

‘That’s who this baby girl will be like. Isabella. Yes. And I’ll call her Belle. For her. Belle, yes, come out little one. We’ll work something out, you and me. We’ll keep the midwife at bay, and when it’s all over there won’t be much they can do about us, you and me together. Who’s to know, eh little Belle? They stick their noses in the air and come by dark … well you and I can do a little of that.’

The birds waited outside on the grass but she did not go out to them. They would have to get used to not seeing her around; they and the watchers. If indeed there were still watchers. Perhaps they knew she would not stir for now. Maybe they had gone away. But she could not take a chance.

The japonica bush was flowering, its blooms like blood spots on the shining tangled branches which needed cutting back. The flowers shimmered as she stood looking at them, but the more she stared the more harsh and urgent their colour became. She felt as if she had taken opiates, and she needed to go to the lavatory but it was too late, the water gushed around her feet and now there was blood as well and at the same moment the first pain began.

It was night. The pain had passed. The baby had stopped moving inside her.

‘I think you ought to fight a bit,’ she murmured to it. She lit the candle beside her but her eyes blurred. It was curiously difficult to see.

Then, like a tidal wave, the pain came surging again and she felt like a ship far out at sea hit by a monstrous wall of water and having nowhere to go except run with the elements. Maria thought she would drown.

But she knew now where the baby would come. In the mirror above her bed she could see herself thrashing in the raging shadows of her room and she remembered the white cloth at the window.

In the mirror’s reflection she saw herself, her knees drawn up and parted, and her body open. In its entrance, a sleek wet crown of hair amongst her own matted and bloody bush.

She needed them then, the watchers outside.

They can come if they will save us, she thought. The pain washed back, receded again. I can bear it, she told herself. I will not call them. They think I’m beaten but I am not. There. There, see how it goes. We will be all right.

But in the next wave she was lost, and abandoned the hope she had held so briefly. Mother, where are you? They cannot have taken you away without seeing me. Mother, I know you are listening to me, why don’t you come?

Panting then. Not this bad, please not this bad. She pulled herself upright on the bed, squatting on her haunches. Pushing down, it was easier now, rocking backwards and forwards on her heels, triumphant as the crown began descending into her hand.

No, I will not take the white cloth. I will not put it in the window.

She shouted then to whoever might hear. ‘I need none of you, you hear me, none of you.’

Then it stopped, the baby wedged inside her. Too weak to bear down now, she collapsed forward on her hands and knees. She could hear her voice, whimpering far away. Asking them to come.

They cannot have heard me. Or surely they would be here. Do I have to beg them? Is that it? Yes, it has come to that, I want them. The white cloth. The white cloth. Too late, I cannot get to the window, oh dear Lord. Mother. Oh please God.

A small wailing voice replied. By the candle-light she looked down on the blanket and saw the baby lying between her legs. There, it was done. Joy, like a fresh wave, engulfed her. It will be all right, she said to the baby. I have you now. She slept again, and heard in her sleep the songs of the Gaels, and the echoes of a lament.

When she woke she was stiff and cold, and between her legs there was a cold solid mass. She could not remember for a moment what it was that had so tormented her in the night. The candle had burned down and gone out.

She put her hand on the baby, knowing without looking that it was dead.

A quiet still voice inside her said, ‘There isn’t any God.’

And then she repeated this blasphemy aloud.

With the spade she turned the hard earth. The paddocks were misty and cool but they held the fragrance of approaching spring. The curious wax-eyes stood a careful distance away from her.

Maria scraped the last loose earth over the grave, turned the spade over, and tamped the soil firm with the flat side.

‘Maria McClure.’

At Hector’s call, she leaned on the shovel. It startled her, but at
the same time she had been expecting him. The watchers may have failed at their task, but she knew they would not miss a sight like this. She looked at him without speaking.

‘What are you doing?’ As if he did not know, could not guess.

‘Burying my child. What does it look like?’

‘So you killed it too?’

That was what they would think. She had known that. For two days she had lain, feverish and too weak to move, expecting her own death. She had risen once from the bed and its mess to wrap her daughter in a blanket, clearing mucus from her face. Such a pretty face it could have been, skin like pale morning, slanted eyes and a well-defined mouth, clenched though it was in death’s grimace. A touch of Gael and the gumdigger’s mark upon her too, a new race, my little princess, a different breed we might have brought about, if I had not failed you. Around her neck the tell-tale cord, if only she had known, could have held onto consciousness a minute, or five. A killing of sorts. A failure of will at the critical hour.