Magpie Hall (22 page)

There
. McDonald hands the sketch pad to Henry, and Dora huddles into him to look at it. The tattooer has taken some liberties with the positioning of bird, accentuating the curve of its beak by also curving its neck.

I can see it reaching across her back, says McDonald, taking in her shoulder blades. The design will work in with her womanly shape, see.

Dora blushes and looks away, but nods her assent.

How long will it take? she asks.

Not as long as you would think, says McDonald. In fact, I have a surprise for you.

He turns and picks up an instrument. He fiddles with it for a moment and it springs to life with a whizzing sound.

What is it? asks Henry. It looks to him like an automaton, clearly electrified, but it is crudely made with pieces of metal and wood and rubber. McDonald holds it closer and now Henry can see the little nib moving so fast that it is invisible.

The electric tattoo machine, says McDonald proudly. This will revolutionise the tattoo business, mark my words. From now on, everything is going to change.

Dora shudders beside him. I don’t know, she says. It doesn’t look safe.

McDonald shuts the instrument off and the silence in the room rises to greet them. Oh, it’s safe, madam, he says. And it will make the lines finer, and faster. You’ll hardly feel the difference except you’ll be sitting in the chair for a shorter time and it really will be like drawing
on you with a pen. Much more accurate. You’ll be pleased with the results.

To prove it, he rolls up the sleeve of his left arm to reveal a ship rendered in intricate detail, like a fine pen and ink drawing. Its sails flicker and blaze in the wind while the waves cream at its bow. There is no denying its superiority.

I’ll go first, Henry says, and touches Dora’s elbow. Will that help?

She sighs in relief. Yes. Please.

Very well. He settles himself back into the silk cushions. He unties his cravat and unbuttons his shirt, which he pulls back to expose his chest, and takes a cigarette from the silver tray beside him.

Here. He taps his chest, just below the rose that McDonald tattooed when he first arrived. I don’t care about England any more. I want you to write her name, just here, above my heart. I want you to write
Dora
.

Very well. McDonald takes a razor and shaves the area, then wipes it clean with alcohol. He dips the needle in ink and the tattoo machine kicks into life with a grunt. Henry grips his thighs and closes his eyes. His pectoral muscles tense in anticipation of an assault. When it comes he gasps, not from pain, but from surprise at the sensation. It doesn’t hurt any more or less than the hand-held needle, but it carries a heat with it, and he feels the warmth deposited beneath his skin and spread through his muscles. He opens his eyes and sees Dora, concentrating on his face, reading his every move.

He begins to relax and as he does so, the pain eases. He smiles at his wife.

Yes, he says. You will be fine. It is no worse than before, merely different.

The steady vibration is even pleasant, he fancies, like the steady
whirr of a hummingbird’s wings as it hovers above a flower to steal its nectar.

Hummingbird, he says to Dora. It’s like a hummingbird.

She looks confused but says nothing, only stares at the word emerging on his chest, and so rapidly. It is all over in five minutes. McDonald wipes away a trickle of blood. For such a rough man, his penmanship is most satisfactory, with the D slightly slanted, elegant and bold, running on with a flourish to the smaller O and beyond. The line is cleaner than it would have been before, truer. Most satisfactory.

Dora is smiling now, her face relaxed. He can see the eagerness in her eyes.

Ready? he asks her.

Ready. She sits down.

And you are sure this is what you want? he asks her one last time.

It is, she says. Only, Henry — she turns in her seat and grabs his hand suddenly, fiercely. I am a little scared. Tell me everything will be all right.

Of course it will be, he assures her, but there is something else troubling her, he can feel it in the way her hand grips his, the urgency with which she searches for reassurance.

Everything will be wonderful, he says.

Dora

The huia tattoo took two sessions to complete: first the outline in black, then a return visit a few days later to fill in the colour. She wishes she could see it first hand, but she must look at it through a series of mirrors, so she is never sure whether she is seeing it as it appears, or whether the image is reversed. It is stunning. The huia seems so full of life that it might seek its freedom and fly from her back, and yet it is undeniably stylised. McDonald has taken liberties in the design that only complete the natural beauty of the bird; it moulds to the contours of her shoulder blades and back like a caress.

Although the tattoo is painful, and she cannot sleep on her back, it is worth it. For days she has sloughed off the bad feelings she has been experiencing since Henry’s absence and since she learned of her pregnancy. It is as if the ink has given her life; it pulses under her
skin, entering her blood and racing to the tips of her fingers. She is in a constant state of excitement, as if something wonderful is about to happen, and every movement she makes seems larger and more meaningful than before. Her head feels light on her shoulders. She wonders if this is what it is like to be drunk.

They stay in town and go to the theatre and to the races. She finds a new vigour for life and every night they make love as if it were their last chance. She wants to return to McDonald, to feel the electric needle singing over her skin, but Henry says no for now, that he must return to the country to oversee his business; they can come back next month.

Next month. As the carriage thunders towards the estate Dora puts her hand on her belly, judging its girth, and wonders when she will start to show the life growing inside. Henry is in an inexplicably bad mood, which happens more and more regularly. He says it is nothing to do with her; that he wakes up feeling black and there is nothing he can do to control it. But when he won’t look at her, she can’t help but feel slighted. She wonders if he has guessed her condition and is angry with her. She knows that he is growing tired of life at home and longs to get away again, up into the mountains or to the North Island, foraging for treasures. Perhaps he has wearied of her and wants to leave the country altogether, to go back to England, but is kept here by his commitments to the farm.

Pulling up outside Magpie Hall, she feels the life the ink gave her draining away. She loves the house because Henry restored it for her, but it is so cold, so big. It is surely the kind of place people’s ghosts cling to when they die, unable to find their way out of its corners and hidden rooms to move on to the next world.

With Henry gone most days, she throws herself into the running of the house. The housekeeper is startled by her interest but tolerates
the endless stream of questions about food and fire-lighting schedules, about the household accounts and the industriousness of the maids and the gardeners. Dora knows she works to keep something at bay — the blackness that Henry talks about descends on her also, as though the house has infected them both.

She awakes one morning in April, when the sun has begun rising later and the leaves on the trees are beginning to turn. Henry’s arms are wrapped around her and she enjoys the warmth of his body against hers.

He awakes with a hum in her ear.

Good morning, he says, and releases her so he can stretch.

What are you doing today? she asks.

I have just one small meeting, he says, with the overseer. And then I am all yours. Perhaps we could have a picnic, down by the river, if the weather is good.

Dora glances doubtfully at the curtains. Did you not hear the rain on the roof in the night? she says. Honestly, I think you could sleep through an earthquake if it hit us.

She can barely read the clock beside her, which says ten past seven, and the typical morning light is not seeping around the edges of the curtains as it should. She slips out of bed and opens them a crack to look out.

The rain is still coming down in steady sheets — what she thinks of as
wet
rain. If she opened the window she would be able to hear the river.

You’re not thinking of going out in this, surely? She pulls the curtain aside from the window and turns to show him.

I’m afraid my business won’t wait. Just wrapping up a few things. You’ll be pleased when I’m finished, Dora. Then we can go back to town if you wish. We could even book an expedition somewhere. If you like.

Like? She smiles and throws herself back down on the bed. Oh, you have made me
very
happy, Mr Summers.

But later, when Henry has breakfasted and left, she feels her queasiness return. When her maid pulls her corset tight over her chemise she worries that she is squashing the baby inside her and tells her to loosen it. Her navel sticks out more than it used to — surely Henry has noticed? But she has been careful about undressing in the dark recently, and what his eyes haven’t seen his hands haven’t detected.

How can she possibly travel anywhere remotely dangerous in her condition?

She finds her way to the room under the tower where Henry’s collection is housed. In here, she feels as though she is breathing in the whole world — Africa, South America, India, Japan, the South Pacific. The room is getting crowded now and things have been shifted around to accommodate the moa bones, and the new insects and species of birds that have been expertly mounted by her husband. They look down at her — large green parrots with sturdy claws, dainty little fantails clinging to thin branches, and a magpie that glares at her just like the birds that parade around the house and nestle in the chimneys.

She peers though the glass of one of the cases, at the snakes suspended in liquid, at a — yes, she has to look twice to be sure — two-headed kitten hanging in the light. The sight makes her step back. She hadn’t realised Henry was quite so morbid, but then again, it is a curiosity, just as the more exotic but single-skulled creatures are. She wonders why she has not noticed it before, and finds herself drawn in to examine the case more closely. She has never minded that Henry has discouraged her from looking in here, contenting herself with gazing up at the bright plumage of the
birds, or the fierce eyes of mammals, the sparkling wings of insects framed and hung on the wall. The cases, by contrast, are dingy, with no colour to them. Their contents are pale and fleshy and as she peers closer she begins to make out shapes. A human hand. Her heart beats faster. How disgusting. It looks like a turnip carved for a scarecrow.

She tries the door to the case, expecting to find it locked, but it moves easily under her fingers. She pushes the hand aside and reaches behind it, pulling out the first jar she touches.

No, she says. Her hands begin to shake and the shape inside, which at first she took to be some kind of sea anemone, spins slowly in the glow of the lamp. She is looking at a human baby. Only it is so small, it can never have been born. Its head is large in proportion to its thin body, its eyes huge and veined beneath the skin that covers its sockets.

She feels a churning then, inside, unsure whether the life within her is kicking to be let out, or her own gut is heaving at the sight of the foetus.

But there is more, she knows there is. She brings out another jar — tiny baby’s feet — and begins to weep for the child, for its mother. For herself. Her hands move independently, shoving aside eels and pickled stoats, until there, at the back of the case, a face stares out at her — a child’s face. She brings it out slowly, with two hands, reads the label: smallpox. The lightly pitted face has been removed from the skull and floats soft and jelly-like, a mask with holes where the eyes should be. A child. Not a curiosity, not something to be coveted and collected and gloated over.
A child
.

The jar slips and smashes on the ground. Liquid splashes over her dress, her feet, and the face flaps like a fish on the ground. She thinks she can feel its cool flesh against her own.

She screams, kicks it away and folds herself into the far corner of the room.

This is the real reason he does not want children. This is what happens to them when they get sick, or die — they become trophies in a cabinet. She must do everything she can to protect the child inside her, and that means staying at home and keeping it safe. Damn Henry and his wild adventures. She puts her head on her knees and sobs.

This is how Henry finds her, only minutes later.

He begins to rush to her but stops when his feet crunch on glass.

What is this? What has happened? He crouches down and stares at the face on the floor, at the wet mess she has made.

It’s disgusting, she cries. How could you own such a thing? She expects him to come to her then, to take her in his arms. But he stands, draws himself tall.

You’re being ridiculous, he says. It’s not as if I murdered it. It is a medical curiosity, nothing more.

But where did you get it?

From a hospital.

He glances at the cabinet, sees it in disarray.

I see you have found my other specimens. I got them all from the hospital. They were just going to be incinerated.

But what about those children’s mothers?

They didn’t want them! Good God, woman, what has got into you?

They were just babies! she yells. Her shoulders convulse with the effort of holding her tears back.

Henry steps over the mess on the floor. He bends down. She feels his hot breath on her face and recognises the flaming cheeks, the cruel set of his mouth. He grabs her shoulders and hauls her to
her feet, then shakes her until she thinks she might vomit on him. He shouts in her face, Pull yourself together! Flecks of spittle fly into her eye.

She pushes him away with all her strength and is astonished at how effective it is. His angry face collapses into surprise as he barrels backwards into the cabinet, which shakes under the impact but does not break or fall.

Dora lifts her skirts and runs for the door, careful to take a giant step to clear the debris on the floor. It is not fear that drives her, but something else — grief, despair, disappointment. She makes for the door because all she knows is that she needs to get out of this house, away from its dark corners and claustrophobic walls.

Outside, the rain still drives from the sky. It washes her face and drenches her hair and clothes, which suck close to her skin as she runs. Towards the river. The distant roar grows louder the closer she gets. She lets herself through the gate of the home paddock, and when her wet fingers fumble with the catch, she leaves it open and keeps running, not looking back to see whether Henry is following her. She thinks she hears her name on the wind, but it is impossible to tell above the clamour of the water. She is upon it now, and stops for a moment to catch her breath. She takes great gulps of the damp air, and the effort hurts her chest.

She turns left to follow the river, walking now, towards the hills. The water churns brown beside her; it has risen so high that she must navigate great puddles in the path. Long grass grabs at her skirts, while rain and damp earth moisten her boots. As she rounds the bend where the young weeping willows are turning amber, a magpie rises slowly into the air, hovers for a second with a squawk, then glides away, following her.

On she trudges, not sure where she is going, knowing only that
she needs to be alone. Henry must have lost her, for he would easily have caught up with her by now, and for a second she imagines him engulfing her in his warm arms, shielding her from the rain. From her own foolishness.

She is suddenly conscious of all the sounds around her: of the swoosh of her legs in the grass, and the rhythm of her feet in the mud, the sound of the rain as it is swallowed by the raging stream. Her head is down, listening, and she does not see the ambush waiting for her until she is upon it.

The first magpie has been joined by more. They strut about, surrounding her. She has an urge to turn and run back the way she came, but they are all around her now, staring at her. She stops and waits. Their cacophony drowns out everything else, even the roar of the river. Dora puts her hands over her ears and shouts at them: Stop! Stop! Get out of my way!

But instead they fly towards her. She screams and crouches down, covering her face with her arms, but still they come, pecking at her neck and her back, tangling their claws in her hair. Blindly, Dora stands up, and runs straight into the waiting river.