Free Captive Wife, The by Fiona Kidman Page B

reaches inside her mouth and grasps an object within, pulling it away. ‘See,’ he says, holding the filament of bone to the lit candelabra, ‘it was stuck between your back teeth. Not a problem after all.’
    Miss Malcolm lies back for a moment longer, in a state of confusion at the nearness of the man leaning over her. He does not draw away as quickly as she would have expected. Her hand flutters to her breast. He must be twenty years younger than she is.
    â€˜All is well,’ she is able to murmur at last.
    â€˜Indeed.’ The surgeon’s white hand clasps hers for an instant, and then he withdraws it, sitting up straighter.
    â€˜What must you think of me? I cannot go back into that room,’ says Adie Malcolm. Her voice is husky and does not sound as if it belongs to her.
    â€˜The soup was ample,’ the surgeon says. ‘I am happy to sit here while we recover ourselves. Besides, I do not think the gentlemen at dinner are very pleased with me.’
    â€˜You really believe Captain Guard is as bad as you described him in there?’
    â€˜My dear lady, I tell you solemnly, that man has blood on his hands. He was a common felon. A man who has done very well for himself in these parts, even though he’s crying poverty now. Have you not heard how, when he was on a sealing expedition, he abandoned two men to die on the Auckland Islands in the Antarctic winter without provisions? One of them survived to tell his story. Now if that is not murder, what is?’
    â€˜Perhaps he had his reasons.’
    â€˜Reasons. There are always reasons for Guard. He is a violent man. Doesn’t what I have just said persuade you of that?’
    â€˜It’s hard to know what to believe,’ Miss Malcolm says. Her head is swimming. ‘There’s a growing view that convicts have rights too. The Governor is of that opinion.’
    The surgeon lowers his eyes. His fingers look round and spongy. She shudders inwardly, that they have entered her mouth, as if she has tasted soft dough. The unkind cut about the lieutenant’s regiment returns to her. ‘It was you who quoted Erasmus to me: are we not all wretches in the eyes of God?’
    â€˜I shall find a servant to bring some brandy,’ he says, ‘and then I think I will leave.’ She understands the subject is closed between them.
    â€˜Tell me then,’ Miss Malcolm says, after some time has passed and they have drinks in their hands, ‘what then do you make of the woman, Mrs Guard?’ She feels as if she owes her life to the surgeon, despite his stubbornness and the unattractive hands, and that she should make amends. Nor is she certain of her ground, which seems to shift even as they speak. Here is a man who professes to love the poor and wretched, and yet speaks so badly of others, especially of convicts.
    And the truth is, she is constantly torn between one point of view and another. She would like to extend Christian charity but her expectations are so often failed when she encounters what she thinks of as the convict class (she has only to consider the lieutenant’s cook and her surly rule in the kitchen). In her heart, she understands there is little point in asking the lieutenant in whose house she lives what he believes to be for the best. His target is always of the moment, chosen by his superiors. One day it will be the convicts (and soldiers have little use for them, for what are they but a natural enemy, the reason for the soldiers’ existence in Sydney); the next day it will be the Maoris across the Tasman; another day it could be the Aboriginals.
    But just thinking of the lieutenant makes her heart ache with tenderness. He has had so much to bear, is so unhappy that his life is hardly worth living. She must try as best she can to see all points of view, to consider the matter from every angle.
    â€˜The woman? Oh,’ says the surgeon, a trifle airily for her liking, as he swallows