Captive Wife, The by Fiona Kidman Read Free Book Online Page A

pod of southern right whales played nearthe shore. These are black animals and carry great quantities of oil. I had heard of the right whales coming north from the Antarctic to calve in quiet waters but this was something I never thought to see and it was here right before my eyes.
    I had an idea of how I might go on for the next little while. And in my mind I was seeing the girl.
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    She has been in my mind a long time. She comes to me most often on the watch between midnight and 4, when the dawn is just about to break. Sometimes as daylight comes there is a moment I cannot explain, a moment so fast that I never believe I’ve seen it after it has passed. It is like a green flash, a flicker in the sky. I have asked a sailor or 2 if they ever seen it but they tell me no and now I dare not ask anyone except they think me strange. But it is in times like this I think of the girl and that she is growing older. Somewhere someone may be entering her, they will ride her, tearing her apart like a woman ripping open a seam or a man the canvas of a sail. It will happen and she will be lost to me.
    And I know I do not want that to happen. I want to put her on a promise to me. I need to take her away from John Deaves and her mother and Charlotte and her men and all the women who take bad fortune as their due.
    Perhaps there is a name for what I feel. I want a girl who is mine and nobody but me has had her.
    I will teach her with what kindness there is in me.
    I do not want anyone but her.

Chapter 5
    L ETTER TO P ERCEVAL M ALCOLM E SQUIRE, P ARRAMATTA, N EW S OUTH W ALES FROM HIS SISTER, M ISS A DELINE M ALCOLM, C/- T HE R ODDICK H OME, M ACQUARIE S TREET, S YDNEY
    December 1832     
    My dear brother Percy
    It is now some years since you have seen fit to reply to my letters, but it is my duty as ever, each month, to write you an account of my life here in Sydney. It has been a difficult few weeks, and I am sure you will have it in your heart to take pity on me, for I have lost my dear good friend Mrs Emmeline Roddick, whom I loved as my life. As you know, I have lived in the Roddick home for close to three years, as the governess of Mathilde and little Austen. Emmeline became weaker and weaker with the chest complaint for which there is no cure, an evil scourge that respects neither gentle folk nor criminals, though no doubt a great deal of it has been carried here on the convict transport ships. She had become as a sister to me, albeit a younger sister, for there was a difference of several years in our ages. Lieutenant Roddick remarked on it when he was home, which is not often of course,because of his military duties which take him away for so much of the time. The poor fellow, he’s always been a devilish sort of man, if I may use such coarse language, but he has a merry way with him when he is happy. I do not wish to sound improper, but I would describe him as a handsome man. His dark moustache, sadly, is now tinged with grey, but it is a full moustache, indicating a sturdy constitution, and he is such a big man, at least six foot four in his stockinged feet. Which I admit to having seen, for he took off his shoes and tiptoed around Emmeline’s bed so as not to disturb her in those last terrible days, when she slept fitfully, only to wake gasping for breath that was beyond her reach. I sat and read gently to her each day, and pressed cold flannels hourly against her forehead, but to no avail, she was gone to us.
    The question of what is to happen to me has not been broached, but I fear that before long I will have to return to Rosewood. What will the servants think, me living here in the same quarters that are occupied from time to time by Lieutenant Roddick? I could, of course, take a room down by the cook’s; it is a bare little space, but perhaps I can make it homely. Besides, Hettie is a coarse creature, a ticket of leave woman. We will just have to see, with poor Emmeline not cool in her grave,