Captive Wife, The by Kidman Fiona

Author:Kidman, Fiona [Fiona Kidman]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781869416864
Publisher: Random House New Zealand
Published: 2005-10-30T16:00:00+00:00

‘You have not asked me why I’m here,’ Betty says, after a silence.

Adie is cooling herself with a silk fan that had belonged until yesterday to Charlotte Pugh (who is possibly still unaware that it has changed hands). Betty has brought it as a gift. It is hand painted in the design of a peacock tail, so that it ripples with tunnels of blue light. Like the paua shell, the governess had exclaimed.

‘A passionate blue,’ Betty had murmured.

The gift, of course, had been a perfect choice, both beautiful and practical. How could Adie not have been seduced by it?

Now Adie feels overwrought, as if she is in some kind of slow swelling pain. ‘I’m sure you’ll tell me,’ she says. She feels her face burning and hopes that it is not obvious to the other woman. She is very shocked by what she has heard, and knows, at the same time, that she could sit listening to more all night. The pain is pleasurable; she cannot describe anything like it. Yes. Yes, if she thinks about it, it is like the pain she has felt when the lieutenant is very near to her.

‘It isn’t true,’ says Betty. ‘About Charley. Of course I didn’t do that. Jacky trusted me.’

‘Then why did you tell me it was so?’

‘To see what you would do. Whether you would throw me out.’

‘What do you want of me?’ asks Adie, agitated and angry. She does not know whether she has been tricked, and dare not press the question. Worse, she would like it to be true. For a moment, she has believed it. Perhaps it is.

‘I thought you would have worked that out. I need somewhere to stay until Jacky is no longer angry with me.’

‘Why is he angry with you?’

‘It’s too hard to explain.’

‘Has he found out about Charley?’

Betty’s brow puckers. ‘Charley? This is not about Charley.’

‘I think you’re not in your right state of mind. You’ve recently lost your child for which I am most truly sorry and would have paid my respects had you allowed me.’

Betty rests her head wearily on one hand. ‘Sometimes I think he is grieving for Louisa, as indeed I am. Other times it is as if I have died. In his eyes.’

‘And have you?’

‘Died? I don’t know. A part of me, perhaps, gone the way of the patupaiarehe. My head is away with the fairies.’

‘You may stay here tonight. It’s too late for you to return.’

‘And then what? I go back to his silence.’

‘How long has he been like this?’

‘Since the rescue. When the ships came to Taranaki and he took me back from Oaoiti, who is the chief who protected me while I was held by the Maoris.’

‘I see,’ says Adie. And somewhere, she thinks she does begin to see, that some key to the mystery has been turned. His name may be Charley. Or not.

‘I cannot bear silence,’ Betty says. ‘It is like a blunt axe and just as painful.’

The cook has arrived with the evening

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