“Were Eliza and Andrew McKenzie lovers, Mrs. Thomas?” I whispered.
“I do hope so,” she said softly. “I hope to God they was.”
I did not sleep that night. Just after midnight, I rose, dressed, and made my way down the corridor, past cabin after dark cabin from which fitful masculine snores could be discerned. It seemed to go on forever, that corridor, a whole cynical universe of tiny, airless boxes from which simple human connection was forever banished.
It was very dark on deck, with only a few lanterns lighted and just one sailor on watch. I made my way to the stern rail and turned to look out to sea, thinking of my father, and of what awaited me in Hong Kong. Thinking of Philip.
I did not hear the footsteps approach me. Out of nowhere, as though from the heavy, sodden air itself, a broad hand smashed itself over my mouth. “Don’t cry out!” said Logan.
Though I could not see him, I knew at once who it was. I nodded my head, and his hand relaxed its pressure a little. “If I let you go,” he said in a hoarse, grating whisper, “you must promise not to turn around.”
I nodded again, and he uncovered my mouth. “Did you kill her?” I said. “Did you kill Eliza?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“I killed her heart.”
“But you didn’t put the noose round her neck.”
“No. When I came in, she was standing on the ladder with the cord around her throat.”
I wanted terribly to turn and see his face, but I reached out a hand into the hot darkness instead. To my surprise, his fingertips touched mine, then grasped them hard. So we stood, awkward and equal.
“She never asked questions,” he whispered. “She knew only the self that was born when I met her.”
“And the other? Lucy’s husband?”
“I had not seen my wife in twenty years! She was scarcely real to me anymore. And I loved Eliza so. I could not give her up.”
“But you abandoned her to her family and went back to sea.”
“I meant to stay away, write to her, tell her the truth. Do the decent thing. But I could not. I regretted what I had done to her. But it was a kind of death for me, being without her.”
Like my father’s exile to Hong Kong, I thought. Like my refusal of Philip.
“That day on Tacoya docks,” Logan went on, “I knew from the moment I saw her that she had learned the truth. I said such things to her — It was nothing to do with that necklace, nor with McKenzie. I think I wanted her to be as guilty as I was. And I knew she was not. She could never be.”
I let go his hand and turned to look at him. His face, in the flickering light of the stern lantern, was not at all that of a madman.
“Tell me how she died,” I told him. “You must. They will ask you in Singapore.”
“I will not be in Singapore,” he said.
He shrugged, hunching his shoulders against the weight of his memory, and in my mind, I saw them both. Heard the wash of the sea against the hull. The battering of wakeful birds against cages.
“I dared not come too close,” he began, “for her feet barely clung to the ladder. I begged her forgiveness. Told her we might yet love one another. She said nothing, only looked at me, but I saw no anger in her face. And then she — stepped away, that was all. Into the air.”
It sounded two bells. From somewhere ashore, there was music and the laughter of girls who did not mind what man lay in their arms.
“I ran towards her,” Logan went on, “to lift her body up. I might have saved her. But like a fool I tripped over a chair and fell. I was too late. Too late.”
If it were Philip, I thought, if I had seen his body dangling there on that hook, what would I have done? Wept? Screamed? No. It is not my nature. I should have wanted him down from there, whatever it cost me. Wanted him once more in my arms, dead or living.
“I’m a coward,” Logan said, as though he had read my mind. “Lucy knew what I was. And all cowards are selfish. When Eliza was dead, I thought of what they might do to me. I thought of food and drink, and where I might hide till I could make my escape. I behaved like a murderer because that is what I am. It has been in me all these years, like syphilis. Turn around, now. Go back to your cabin. Do not interfere.”
He would let the sea have him, I knew that. He had been waiting all these days for me, to tell me the scrap of truth that was his story. Had he seen something in me that might understand him — a something that lived outside the cages of convention and decorum and false modesty and smothering religion?
Dayton Logan had not put Eliza into a cage. He had opened the door of the one into which she had been born and had lived all her life, and Lucy or no Lucy, they might have been happy. He had told her so. But Eliza was a cagebird, too frightened to fly.
I found myself thinking of Lucy herself, in whatever “tony” cage her uppity family had found for her. And of Philip’s wife, Cornelia, too.
I did not wait to hear the slight splash Logan’s body must have made as it slipped from the stern of the China Star into the dark, tangled waters of Gabinea docks, nor hear the cries when he was found the next morning. I did not watch as McKenzie went into the after-cabin, brought out the cages of songbirds, and let them fly away to their fate.
I left Logan behind in his darkness and went down again, into that interminable corridor of passengers’ cabins. There was a dim light under one door, and I knocked softly. “Philip?” I said. “Are you awake?”
I heard his footsteps, and in a moment the door opened. “Why, Harriet,” he said gently. “You’ve been crying. You never cry.”
“Does Cornelia love you, Philip? Is she glad to be your wife?”
He did not flinch. “Not mine in particular. It’s a game she could play with anyone. Less boring than whist. But only just.”
I laid my palm upon his tired face. “Back in Devon, I was afraid of myself,” I said, “and all cowards are selfish. I am braver now. Let me in.”
Copyright © 2006 Margaret Lawrence
The Brick
by Natasha Cooper
Natasha Cooper’s series starring British barrister Trish Maguire has proved popular on both sides of the Atlantic. St. Martin’s Press published the seventh novel, Gagged and Bound, last September, with another expected later this year. Ms. Cooper’s second story for us is a non-series tale that harks back to her days as an editor in London.
It all started with the broken window. That was what was so infuriating. If those wretched children hadn’t found the brick next-door’s cowboy builders had left in the front garden and thought it would be fun to smash a big bit of clean glass, none of it would have happened. We’d still have been okay; not in seventh heaven or anything extravagant like that, but okay.
The randomness of it still makes me swear. It needn’t have happened; none of it. That’s what gets to me when I let myself think about it.
There I was peacefully sitting on a beanbag on the floor (we’d sanded the boards by then but not varnished them and they looked a bit splintery; but they were clean, which was something after the state we’d found them in when we tore up the old lino) reading short stories for a contest. They were all about spouses killing each other, of course: short stories for contests nearly always are. And I’d been congratulating myself rather because however livid I’d been with John, I’d never, even in my wildest, most secret fantasies, wanted to kill him. Stiffen him, maybe; tell him not to be such a baby and to get on out there and do his bit of the bargain, like I’d always done mine. I mean, I’d given up my job when it was clear that he needed more input than I’d been able to give him while I was working so hard.