The Luminaries (95 page)
PART SEVEN
In which Edgar Clinch attempts to exercise his authority, having deduced that Anna’s recent decline in health owes much to a new dependency both facilitated and encouraged by her employer, Mannering; and Anna Wetherell, whose obstinacy of feeling is more than a match for Clinch’s own, does not indulge him.
‘I don’t have anything against the Chinese,’ said Clinch. ‘I just don’t like the look of it, that’s all.’
‘What does it matter what it looks like?’
‘I don’t like the feel of it. That’s what I meant. The situation.’
Anna smoothed down the skirt of her dress—muslin, with a cream skirt and a crocheted bust, one of five that she had
purchased
from the salvage vendors following the wreck of the
Titania
some weeks ago. Two of the gowns had been speckled with black mould, the kind that any amount of washing would not remove. They were all very heavy, and the corsets, very fortified, tokens by which she presumed them to be relics of an older, more rigid age. The salvage man, as he wrapped the purchases in paper, had informed her that, very strangely, the
Titania
had been conveying no female passengers at all on the day she came to ground; stranger still, nobody had come forward to claim this particular trunk after the cargo had been recovered from the wreck. None of the
shipping
firms seemed to know the first thing about it. The bill of lading had been rendered illegible by salt water, and the log did not
list the item by name. It was certainly a mystery, the salvage man concluded. He hoped that she would not come to any
embarrassment
or difficulty, in wearing them.
Clinch pressed on. ‘How are you to keep your wits about you, when you’re under? How are you to defend yourself, if—if—well, if you encounter something—untoward?’
Anna sighed. ‘It isn’t your concern.’
‘It’s my concern when I can see plain as day that he’s got your advantage, and he’s using you for ill.’
‘He will always have my advantage, Mr. Clinch.’
Clinch was becoming upset. ‘Where did it come from—your thirst? Answer me that! You just picked up a pipe, did you, and that was all it took? Why did you do it, if you weren’t compelled by Mr. Mannering himself? He knows the way he wants you: without any room to move, that’s how. Do you think I haven’t seen it before, this method? The other girls won’t touch the stuff. He knows that. But he tried it on you. He set you up. He took you there.’
‘Edgar—’
‘What?’ said Clinch. ‘What?’
‘Please leave me be,’ said Anna. ‘I can’t bear it.’
In which Emery Staines enjoys a long luncheon with the magnate Mannering, who, over the past month, has made a concerted effort to court his friendship, behaving mayorally, as he prefers to do, as though all goldfields triumphs are his to adjudicate, and his to commend.
‘You’re a man who wears his success, Mr. Staines,’ said Mannering. ‘That’s a uniform I like.’
‘I’m afraid,’ said Staines, ‘my luck has been rather awfully
exaggerated
.’
‘That’s modesty talking. It was a hell of a find, you know, that nugget. I saw the banker’s report. What did it fetch—a hundred pounds?’
‘More or less,’ said Staines, uncomfortably.
‘And you picked it up in the gorge, you said!’
‘Near the gorge,’ Staines corrected. ‘I can’t remember exactly where.’
‘Well, it was a piece of good luck, wherever it came from,’ said Mannering. ‘Will you finish up these mussels, or shall we move on to cheese?’
‘Let’s move on.’
‘A hundred pounds!’ said Mannering, as he signalled to the waiter to come and take their plates away. ‘That’s a d—n sight more than the price of the Gridiron Hotel, whatever you paid for the freehold. What did you pay?’
Staines winced. ‘For the Gridiron?’
‘Twenty pounds, was it?’
He could hardly dissemble. ‘Twenty-five,’ he said.
Mannering slapped the table. ‘There you have it. You’re sitting on a pile of ready money, and you haven’t spent a single penny in four weeks. Why? What’s your story?’
Staines did not answer immediately. ‘I have always considered,’ he said at last, ‘that there is a great deal of difference between
keeping
one’s own secret, and keeping a secret for another soul; so much so that I wish we had two words, that is, a word for a secret of one’s own making, and a word for a secret that one did not make, and perhaps did not wish for, but has chosen to keep, all the same. I feel the same about love; that there is a world of difference between the love that one gives—or wants to give—and the love that one desires, or receives.’
They sat in silence for a moment. Then Mannering said, gruffly, ‘What you’re telling me is that this isn’t the whole picture.’
‘Luck is never the whole picture,’ said Staines.
In which Sook Yongsheng, having recently taken up residence in Kaniere Chinatown, journeys into Hokitika to outfit himself with various items of hardware, where he is observed by the gaoler George Shepard, known to him as the brother of the man he had been accused of having murdered, and also, as the husband of that man’s true murderer, Margaret.
Margaret Shepard stood in the doorway of the hardware store, waiting for her husband to complete his purchases and pay; Sook Yongsheng, though not eight feet distant from her, was shielded from her view by the dry goods cabinet. Shepard, coming around the side of the cabinet, saw him first. He stopped at once, and his expression hardened; in a voice that was quite ordinary, however, he said,
‘Margaret.’
‘Yes, sir,’ she whispered.
‘Go back to the camp,’ said Shepard, without taking his eyes from Sook Yongsheng. ‘At once.’
She did not ask why; mutely she turned and fled. When the door had slammed shut behind her, Shepard’s right hand moved, very slowly, to rest upon his holster. In his left hand he was holding a paper sack containing a roll of paper, two hinges, a ball of twine, and a box of bugle-headed nails. Sook Yongsheng was kneeling by the paraffin cans, making some kind of calculation on his fingers; he had placed his parcels beside him on the floor.
Shepard was aware, dimly, that the atmosphere in the store had become very still. From somewhere behind him someone said, ‘Is there a problem, sir?’
Shepard did not answer at once. Then he said, ‘I will take these.’ He held up the paper sack, and waited; after a moment he heard whispering, and then tentative footsteps approaching, and then the sack was lifted from his hand. Nearly a minute passed. Sook Yongsheng continued counting; he did not look up. Then the same voice said, almost in a whisper, ‘That will be a shilling sixpence, sir.’
‘Charge it to the gaol-house,’ Shepard said.
In which Alistair Lauderback, believing his half-brother Crosbie Wells to be the half-brother, on his mother’s side, of the blackguard Francis Carver, and believing, consequently, that Crosbie Wells had been in some way complicit in the blackmail under which he, Lauderback, surrendered his beloved barque
Godspeed
, is perplexed to receive a letter with a Hokitika postmark, the contents of which make clear that his apprehension has been quite false, a revelation that prompts him, after a great deal of solemn contemplation, to write a letter of his own.
It would be an exaggeration to say that the renewed
correspondence
of Mr. Crosbie Wells comprised the sole reason for Alistair Lauderback’s decision to run for the Westland seat in Parliament; the letter did serve, however, to tip the scales in the district’s favour. Lauderback read the letter through six times, then, sighing, tossed it onto his desk, and lit his pipe.
West Canterbury. June 1865
Sir you will notice from my postmark that I am no longer a resident of the province of Otago but have ‘upped my sticks’ as the saying goes. You most likely have had little cause to venture west of the mountains so I shall tell you that West Canterbury is a world apart from the grasses of the South. The sunrise over the coastline is a scarlet marvel & the snowy peaks hold the colour of the sky. The bush is wet & tangled & the water very white. It is a lonely place though not quiet for the birdsong is constant & very
pleasant for its constancy. As you may have guessed already I have put my former life behind me. I am estranged from my wife. I ought to tell you that I concealed much in my correspondence with you fearing that if you knew the bitter truth you might think less of me. I shall not trouble you with the details of my escape to this place for it is a sorry tale & one that saddens me to recall. I am twice bitten three times shy which is a less admirable ratio than other men can boast but suffice to say that I have learned my lesson. Enough upon that subject instead I shall speak about the present & the future. I mean to dig for gold no longer though West Canterbury is flush with colour & men are making fortunes every day. No I will not prospect & have my fortune stolen once again. Instead I shall try my hand at the timber trade. I have made a fine acquaintance of a Maori man Terou Tow-Faray. This name in his native tongue means ‘The Hundred House of Years’. What poor names we British fellows have compared to these! I fancy it might be a line from a poem.
Tow-Faray
is a noble savage of the first degree & we are fast becoming friends. I confess it lifts my spirits to be in the companionship of men again.
Yours &c,
CROSBIE WELLS
In which Emery Staines pays a call upon Anna Wetherell at the Gridiron Hotel, where he begs her, after some preamble, to narrate her version of Crosbie Wells’s escape; and Anna, made curious by the urgency and frankness of his appeal, sees no reason not to recount the tale in full.
Emery Staines did not recognise the dress that Anna was wearing as one of the five that he had been charged to safeguard, pistol in hand, at the Hawthorn Hotel on the afternoon of the 12th of May. It did strike him, when he first appraised her, that the garment fit her rather oddly—it had clearly been tailored for a woman much more buxom than she—but he put the thought aside just as quickly. They greeted one another warmly, but with mutual uncertainty, and after an awkward pause Anna invited him into the parlour, where they sat down on the straight-backed chairs that faced the hearth.
‘Miss Wetherell,’ said Staines at once, ‘there’s something I would like to ask you—something terribly impertinent—and you must knock me back at once if—if you don’t want to give an answer—if you do not want to indulge me, I should say—for whatever reason at all.’
‘Oh,’ said Anna—and then she drew a breath, as if to steel
herself
, and turned her face away.
‘What is it?’ said Staines, drawing back.
Abruptly she rose from her chair and crossed the room; she stood a moment, breathing deeply, her face turned towards the
wall. ‘It’s stupid,’ she said thickly. ‘It’s stupid. Don’t mind me. I’ll be all right in a moment.’
Staines had risen also, in astonishment. ‘Have I offended you?’ he said. ‘I’m terribly sorry if I have—but what is the matter? Whatever can be the matter?’
Anna wiped her face with her hand. ‘It’s nothing,’ she said, still without turning. ‘It came as a surprise, that’s all—but I was stupid to think otherwise. It’s not your fault.’
‘What has come as a surprise?’ said Staines. ‘What’s otherwise?’
‘Only that you—’
‘Yes? Please tell me—so that I can put it right. Please.’
She composed herself at last and turned. ‘You may ask your question,’ she said, managing a smile.
‘Are you quite sure you’re all right?’
‘Quite sure,’ Anna said. ‘Please ask.’
‘Well, all right,’ said Staines. ‘Here. It’s about a man named Crosbie Wells.’
Anna’s expression of misery dissolved into one of shock. ‘
Crosbie Wells
?’
‘He is a mutual friend of ours, I think. At least—that is to say—he has my loyalty; I am under the impression that he also has yours.’
She did not reply; after squinting at him a moment she said, ‘How do you know him?’
‘I can’t tell you that exactly,’ said Staines. ‘He charged me to keep it a secret—his whereabouts, I mean; and the circumstances of our having met. But he mentioned your name in connexion with a gold nugget, and a man named Francis Carver, and a robbery of some kind; and if you don’t think me too impertinent—which I am; I know I am—then I should very much like to hear the whole story. I can’t say that it’s a matter of life or death, because it isn’t, and I can’t say that very much depends on my knowing, because really, nothing at all depends on it; except that I’ve gone into a kind of partnership with Mr. Carver—I was a fool to do it; I know that now—and I’ve got the sense, the awful sense, that I was wrong about him; that he’s a villain after all.’
‘Is he here?’ she said. ‘Crosbie. Is he in Hokitika?’
‘I’m afraid I can’t tell you that,’ said Staines.
Her hands had moved to her belly. ‘You don’t need to tell me where he is,’ she said. ‘But I need you to take him a message. An important message—from me.’